


Straight Until Boiled, or How Yondu Udonta Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dick

by Write_like_an_American



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Alien Sex, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Badass Kraglin, Badass Yondu, Badasses in Love, Bottom Yondu Udonta, Canon-Typical Violence, Drinking, Drinking & Talking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Hand Jobs, I'm so sorry, Jealous!Yondu, Jealousy, Kraglin Whump, Kraglin gets whipped, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prehensile dick, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Top Kraglin Obfonteri, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unrequited Love to Mutual Pining, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Violence, Virginity, Wet Dream, Yondu Udonta the 40-year-old virgin, Yondu does the whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2018-12-05 21:53:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 32
Words: 68,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11586933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Write_like_an_American/pseuds/Write_like_an_American
Summary: Yondu's your average hot-blooded space pirate - fucking bot hookers, adopting Terran half gods, kicking names and taking ass (or is it the other way around?)Then Kraglin Obfonteri, with his baby-blue eyes and nervous smile, has to go and ruin it.





	1. A Bar and a Drink

**Author's Note:**

> **Finally getting this baby edited! Enjoy!**

These are some of the bars that Yondu Udonta has known.

The first looks more like an accident than an architecturally conceived structure. Its six walls are of assorted shapes, sizes, and angularities, like fragments of a smashed glass that have been glued back together again. They’re arranged in an asymmetrical cone, bowing beneath the weight of the station, which has buried this dive under miles of creaking, grinding solar farming equipment.

Once one plate collapses, the rest are sure to follow. They'll flatten like pancakes flipped on a plate, crushing anyone left inside. On that day, this bar's name – whatever it may be; Yondu didn't bother to check – will be scratched off the list of seedy establishments this solar-conversion platform plays host to, the workers will shrug and take their custom to the next hole along, and if they're really unlucky, some sod will sue.

But as with so many things in life, until that first chunk of masonry falls, there ain't no point worrying about it.

Currently, the place is in its prime. Smoke and booze fumes hover in tepid clouds. The air is thick as broth (or perhaps soup of a more primordial nature; it sure feels like it's scrabbling for escape as it's sucked into your lungs).

The brew is complex, and its saturation levels vary depending on where you stand. The vinegariest vapors concentrate on the cracked tun-barrel, which Half-nut and Taserface rolled out of storage and parked across the bartender's legs when he tried to stop them. Warmer reeks of piss and chunder emanate from all corners of the room (knowing the crew's theory of 'if you can shit in it, it's a toilet' this ain't all that surprising).

As for the nose-rotting stink of skin-grease and plasma residue? That's just the Ravagers.

All in all, it's an average scene. Pirates collapsed in various stages of inebriation around a bar that has agreed to serve them, despite Stakar's decree, because the half-Kree owner has an arrow twirling against his windpipe? Check.

One shitty job in the bag and a shittier one over the horizon? Check.

Peter Quill being an aggravating little shit? Check, check, and check.

The kid chatted up a buxom barmaid, got slapped, came whinging to Yondu about the new handprint on his cheek, and passed out on his shoulder like he was newly-inducted to the sweet comforts of booze. Which, had they been on Xandar, might've been true. The kid is sixteen and babyfaced with it. Only way he would be served in a licensed bar is with aid of a pistol. But they're Ravagers, and Quill has been drinking since he was old enough to drive.

One of the hassles of abducting Terrans is that they require rigorous upkeep. Ain't like a feral kitty, which you can leave to its own devices – although it'd be nice if Quill caught some of the  _Eclector's_ native space-rat population on his expeditions through their ventilation system.

Yondu shuffles under Quill's head. He grimaces as drool smears into the cracks on his armored shoulder plate.

“Gross. Is all yer species this leaky, or did I get stuck with the defective?”

But he doesn't shove him off to sleep on the bartop. Quill would only whine if he woke up to find his hair stuck to the damp counter, and whine more when Yondu had to shave him.

The only oddity is that when a drink smacks Yondu's arm, skidding from the other side of the bar, it ain't from a pretty lady. It's from his own damn first mate - who also happens to be the only other person awake (besides the bar owner. It’s difficult to snooze with radiation cooking your trachea.)

Yondu stares at the pair of slopping glasses until they consolidate into a single apparition.

“This poisoned?” he croaks. It's been a long night of celebration. A very, very long one; this satellite is locked in orbit, so that the sun always faces the massive photon-harvester on its opposite side. Yondu's voice, usually sandpaper-veering-on-gravel, is as dry as the gin he's swigging. “F'this is a takeover, Obfonteri, yer gonna have try a bit harder...”

“Not a takeover.” Kraglin sidles up, all long leg and messy Mohawk. He folds onto the seat besides him, and sips from his glass until the tremble in his hand abates. “Just a drink.”

“Which you bought for me? With yer own hard-earned credits?”

“ _Bought?_ ” Kraglin looks offended. That’s great and all; Yondu’d tease him to Asgard and back if he thought the idjit had spent money on him. But this ain’t the point he’s trying to emphasize.

“ _For me?_ ” he repeats.

“Um. Well. Yes. Ain't that a good opener? I can get ya something else, but I had ya pegged as a gin guy. Thas all you order, when, y’know, we got more choice than galley scraps fermented in Oblo's boots...”

He's babbling again. He always does that when he's nervous. Yondu usually finds it endearing, but right now his sodden brain is struggling to process. When he only manages a squint, Kraglin nudges the glass more insistently against his wrist. 

It's cool and chipped, moist with perspiration. Or perhaps that's just Yondu. Because this can't be what he thinks it is. It  _can't be._

“We been bandyin' round each other more than usual these past coupla weeks,” Kraglin continues. He leans until Yondu can smell the contents of that tun barrel on his breath (the man beneath it has finally stopped twitching). “Figured if you wasn't gonna make first move, I might as well. Liquid confidence, an’ all.”

Liquid confidence, huh? It’s tempting to blame this on compromised inhibitions. Although if this had happened every time he and Kraggles got pissed together, Yondu would have named him designated driver by now.

His first mate’s eyes are locked on his, like the polarized clamps that keep a ship docked in zero-gravity. They're grey-blue and bloodshot and just a touch watery from the liquor.

“Hell sir," he says. "You've been flirtin' with me ever since I signed yer damn crewpaper and beat my chest to your Ravager flame. Can't believe it took me over a decade to work up the goddamn guts, but here we are. Me. You. Drink.”

“Me, you, drink,” Yondu echoes hoarsely. “No pick-up line?”

All three of Kraglin’s stool's legs clack on the ground. His smirk shows off pointy lead underteeth. “I was gonna tell ya that yer blue makes my balls a similar shade, sir, but I didn't think you'd appreciate it.”

Yondu's mouth opens. Yondu's mouth shuts. “This ain't funny,” he starts. Kraglin holds up his hands.

“Ain't trying to be.”

Because  _that_ makes this less awkward. Yondu tries a laugh just in case Kraglin's bluffing, praying that he'll join in, that he'll take the drink back, and life will continue as normal: cap'n and first mate cracking knuckles side-by-side. He stops when Kraglin’s expression goes crumply around the edges.

They wait thirty seconds in silence. Yondu stares at Kraglin and Kraglin stares at the untouched drink. Then, after Yondu's sot of a brain starts convincing him to make Kraglin smile again, his mate scoffs and screeches out his stool. “Y'know what? Forget it. Night, sir.”

“Hey, wait!”

Say what you want about him, but if there's one thing Obfonteri ain't, it's disobedient. He's not happy about it, judging by the sour scrunch of his nose and the high hike of his shoulders. But he pauses on the threshold, and that's what matters. 

No time to formulate words. Yondu spits the first on his tongue, with all the finesse of tossed caltrops.

“Yer into guys, Obfonteri?”

He doesn't mean to sound incredulous. It must come across that way though, because Kraglin's back cranks stiff and his gloved hands clamp around the doorframe, leather squeaking against metal. “So what if I am?”

Yondu can't think of an answer in time to stop the door whooshing closed. At first, he's pissed that Kraglin would walk out on him – not his place as a mate; not when he ain’t been dismissed. But he can't chase him down. Not after Quill starts snoring, a quiet suck and push of air. It makes something soften in Yondu's chest that he should probably visit a medical professional about.

And so, he stays put. There ain’t nothing to do but swill the culprit drink, listen to Taserface fart in his sleep, and contemplate Kraglin's reaction.

Course he's tetchy. The majority of planets still live by that outdated Evolutionist twaddle about how  _every sexual relationship should bring with it the chance of reproduction,_ even if they outwardly toe the liberal line, as mandated by the Nova Accords _._ And as for the Ravagers...

Well, when you live on a ship populated predominantly by folks-with-dicks,  _things_ are gonna happen when you're far from port and there ain't no whores on board. But there's a time and place. Those things are reserved for the dead of the night cycle, and then it's strictly with the lights out _._

They're never spoken about, never acknowledged. Certainly never entertained for more than a night – because if there's one thing that's guaranteed to get you deader than sentiment, out here in the big empty black, it's a  _relationship._

…Although truth be told, Yondu's knowledge of what goes on in Cleaning Closet 7A on Z-deck is a lil' hazy. Why bother boffing crew, or flesh-and-blood women for that matter, when bot-hookers come two-for-the-price-of-one?

Sex is about  _physicality. Sensation._ If you can get off on it, it's a viable alternative, and so he understands that if there ain't no robo-pussy available, you might as well settle for some guy's asshole. Never been in that situation himself, of course. But hypothetically, in an emergency...

The point's moot though. There are plenty of bot-hookers strewn across the taproom floor, eyes dulled to save their batteries. The puddles they're lying in will have infiltrated their circuits by now (Ravagers don't pay much heed to warning labels, mostly because few of them can read, and once an astral-cycle some idiot fucks a bot in the shower rooms and fries). But all still have holes for the plundering, and a little thing like  _unresponsiveness_ ain’t never stopped a randy Ravager. Kraglin ain't asking to screw him out of necessity.

Yondu's thought processes feel as washy as his vision. Nevertheless, he manages to slot three concepts together in a coherent order. These are, from first to last:

  1. Kraglin bought (stole; same difference) Yondu a drink.
  2. Kraglin didn't do this because he wanted a quick round in the sack.
  3. Ergo, Kraglin did it because he  _likes_ him. 



_Kraglin likes him._ Pff. That anyone sane would do that is almost as funny as the thought that Kraglin hoped he'd reciprocate.

Only one thing for it. Yondu raises the glass. He inhales deep, and if he had nose hairs, they’d have shrivelled.

The boy chose wisely. Now Yondu can drink himself into a stupor, forget about all this  _liking men_ nonsense, and welcome Kraglin on Bridge once they've gotten over their hangovers with his usual smirk and a wink.

Oh.

Maybe that's why Kraglin thought...

But doesn't he understand that Yondu makes goo-goo eyes at  _everyone_? It's a power play as old as time – he cosies up to enemies and allies alike, making 'em squirm with his lacking sense of personal space and his gleeful willingness to play chicken. If it gets a rise, he does it. If it gets consistent rises, he does it a lot – and Kraglin always  _did_ turn such a fun shade of beetroot when Yondu slunk up behind him on Bridge and growled 'boo' in his ear.

If he only flirts with Kraglin to prove dominance, it's kinda redundant. Kraglin's the loyallest of the lot. He wouldn't stick a knife in his back, not if Yondu offered it to him hilt first, then stripped to his waist so Kraglin could gawk at every chunk that's been carved from him by the slavers' nine-tailed, nail-strung flail. If he ordered Kraglin to kill him, the idiot would probably implode from the paradox.

But Yondu can't contemplate the ins and outs of  _why_ he enjoys teasing his mate. Not when there's spirits to be imbibed and a sleeping Terran on his shoulder.

The gin is sour and refreshing. It hits his sinuses like a combined dose of brainfreeze and sniffed glue. Yondu doesn't pause to savor it. He gets that first swallow out the way and keeps on chugging, then strains to reach the next bottle without waking Quill.

 

* * *

 

It turns out to be one of his less successful plans. Firstly, he remembers everything – from the way Kraglin's confident slink towards him devolved into a scamper away, to the plastic blankness of his expression after Yondu turned him down. Hell. The only way this morning could get any worse is if...

Yondu tries to sit. He hisses, when every chin-hair _pulls_. 

It takes him a moment to find his bearings. But gradually sense swims back: it ain't a pillow under his cheek but a sticky bartop, and the odd shape besides him ain't no bot-hooker, but the face of a sixteen year old Terran.

They stare at each other, inches apart. Then realize their predicament, and groan.

“Least,” says Quill, ripping himself upright and interrupted by his own yowl, “I don't gotta shave today. You coming, boss?”

Yondu ain't jealous that Quill needs to shave every day. Absolutely not.

Truth be told, it's tempting to stay here, given the confrontation that's waiting. He musta done something awful in his last life. Or this one, for that matter. He's got plenty of sins under his belt, from arson to tax evasion. The confessional from last night could be karma's way of punishing him for any one of them.

Yondu closes his eyes. He mentally psyches himself up for the trial-by-angry-silence that accompanies his first mate's sulks. His arrow dropped when he slept, and the half-Kree has long-since scarpered, so it's only him and Quill and a stinky dogpile of Ravagers.

As for Kraggles? He's nowhere in sight.

Yondu shepherds his moaning crew to the dock, Quill staggering against him. He threatens to whistle if they don’t pick up the pace. He's glad it ain’t required. His head throbs in time with the neon signs overhead, and the sonorous hum of star-energy, siphoning through the massive coils around which the bars and bet-shops have been cobbled, is mildly more agonizing than if a cheese grater were being rubbed over his eardrums. 

He’s intrigued by Obfonteri’s absence. Not  _worried._ Intrigued.

What did he do after slamming that door? Did he stalk off to drink alone? Bedd down in an alcove, common to the underdecks of solar-farms like these, populated by hobos and rats? Or did he find a bar that catered to guys like him, and send another drink scooting along it?

It doesn't matter, Yondu tells himself. Kraglin's a big boy. He can do what he wants, fuck who he likes. The only reason Yondu needs to concern himself is if it starts affecting his work. Or, heaven forbid, if Kraglin's as mortified as he is, and decides he needs a fresh start on a new crew... 

When the shuttle hatch reels open, Kraglin's sleepy voice filters from the cockpit. “That you, cap'n?”

Yondu doesn't sigh in relief. There ain't no point being  _relieved_  if you hadn't been worried prior. But he does exhale louder than usual, and dumps Quill on the gangramp before stomping through to set the record straight.

Kraglin sits where he'd slept: sprawled over the pilot's chair. There's another bony limb everywhere Yondu looks, and he stinks like he's been at the Huffer cigarettes (Yondu makes a mental note to search the cockpit after Kraglin's vacated, and eject any of them tar-filled cancer-sticks from the airlock). His gaze latches onto Yondu's in the glass for all of a second. Then he glances away, waving for the holo-keypad so he can input their take-off algorithm manually, rather than prodding the button that'll do it all on automatic.

“Nothin' happened,” he mutters, before Yondu can get a chance. Yondu blinks.

“Huh?”

“Nothin' happened. You an' me, we're good. Right?”

All his threats, which had been lined up in ascending order of goriness, now seem superfluous. Yondu tries not to let his disappointment show.

“Course. Get us in the air, Obfonteri.” If any crew are lagging, they can hitchhike. Yondu's done with this satellite.

He collapses on the chair besides Kraglin. If he was the sort of weak-livered frail who got hangovers, his head might be pounding right about now. One hand flung up – not to shield his vision from the glaring docklights, just for the hell of it – he scowls at the faraway stars.

The _Eclector_  blots out a clump at the corner of the nearest constellation _._  She hovers on the cusp of an orbit, her engines occasionally spurting purple fire to accommodate for minute shifts in the flux-field of the solar farm's gravity. 

“Home sweet home,” he mutters. When Kraglin snorts, Yondu finds himself smiling.


	2. Cat and Mouse

 The important members of his crew have been rehydrated back to optimal Bridge-efficiency. For some, this is achieved with the aid of IV lines. For most, the same ends are attained with a bucket, and a choice between chugging and waterboarding.

Yondu dispenses his tried-and-tested hangover cure on any Ravagers who bitch about migraines. He prescribes a headlock, plus a jaunty whistle-along to Quill's tunes that makes his arrow jig and flip, one shrill note from puncturing the view-glass and seeing them all sucked into the vacuum.

This treatment may not have the approval stamp of Doc Mijo, resident chief of the medbay (or at least, the practitioner who's had her license revoked least often). But it does the trick. They're only an hour into first shift, and the Bridge crew are actually sat on their seats, as opposed to puddled on the floor. They even look alert! That's what Yondu calls  _results._

However, the wave of swallowed yawns that circles the Bridge ain't Yondu's biggest problem. His biggest problem is this: try as he might, it's impossible to stop messing with Kraglin.

Ain't Yondu's fault the man's a delight when he's flustered. His cheeks mottle to an ugly piebald-red, mohawk crumpled from his habitual tugging, and stubble bristly as if he's grabbed a live coil while working M-ship maintenance. Seeing him stutter about all tongue-tied is usually the highlight of Yondu's day.

But thanks to their powwow the night before, any amusement Yondu ekes at Kraglin's expense has soured.

 _A_ _confession_ _._ Stars above. Like Kraglin's a chick from one of them Xandarian romance holopads that Yondu totally doesn't read on the sly; the ones from which he formulated his concept of  _love_ as something ghastly and saccharine, incompatible with the Ravager lifestyle.

Eight hours ago, as his mate steered their shuttle into the  _Eclector's_ dock, Yondu had told himself he only had to be concerned about Obfonteri's preferences if they started affecting his work. But they already are, consciously or otherwise. Yondu ain't never gonna look at the skinny git in the same way. Not knowing that he fantasizes about... Well.

_Them._

Together.

In bed, where Yondu's proud to say he ain't had no one but bot-hookers – and he intends to keep it that way.

Nope. He's gotta set boundaries. He needs to redefine his relationship with Obfonteri; make it stricter, more professional. It'll suck, losing his favorite accomplice-slash-joke-butt. But at the end of the day, it'll be worth it.

Perhaps he'll promote one of them idjits from an Evolutionist planet in his stead. Like Half-nut, who imparts the occasional drunk sermon on the evils of sticking your dick in anything that ain't reproductively compatible (including bots, other species, and even your own fist, much to the crew's amusement). He's a worse nuisance than Quill, but at least he wouldn't _hit_ _on him –_ or do what Kraglin is now: making Yondu hyperaware of every motion, replaying them over and over in his head as he tries to work out whether they could be misconstrued as seductive _._

It's uncomfortable. Kraglin ain't even looking at him – he seems to be making a point out of acting blasé about the whole thing, as if him casually admitting that he wants to ride his captain's donger hasn't driven a wedge between them. But Yondu feels like he's being watched nevertheless.

The solution is deceptively simple. If Yondu needs to resist the urge to treat Obfonteri as a man-size fidget toy, prodding, poking, and pestering him whenever he's in reach, he simply has to  _stay away from him._

His body falls into familiar rhythms (a smirk shared when Quill bungles the nav system and alarms howl across the upper deck; a nudge of shoulders as they stand side by side before their view-screen, plotting courses that push their girl close enough to the stars to get a boost from their gravitational swing without being sucked in). But determination prevails. When Kraglin slouches over to check the engine feeds, Yondu peels away. He crosses to the observation deck instead, admiring the spangled flow of space between jump-holes.

When Kraglin makes a circuit of the weapons consoles, ensuring every dial resides within the 'safe' and 'non-nuclear' zones, Yondu saunters to the comms. He patches through to the engines, and enquires as to the status of their fusion-core.

And, when Kraglin stands besides the captain's chair, Yondu doesn't sit down for the rest of their shift.

So on and so forth. Before, they'd been attached at the hip (or at least spiralling back to each other every few minutes to report (and mock) anyone who was flagging at their post). Now they play a slow game of cat and mouse, paced at walking speed, its parameters decided by the walls of the Bridge.

Of course, someone notices. Yondu just wishes that someone didn't have to be Quill.

“What's going on?” the kid asks, pulling off his holo-interaction gloves. “Lovers' spat?” He hops down from the nav-plinth without disengaging the holomatter. Idiot.

How many times does Yondu have to tell him to be  _careful_ with their old girl? If she breaks beyond what can be fixed by an engineer armed with a spacemask, a portable welder, and a manual, they ain't affording a new galleon. Not unless Stakar gets blasted by the Infinity Mind-Stone – a solution Yondu toys with, but only when he's drunk enough that pissing off Thanos seems like a fair price to pay, if it'll earn the respect of his ex-admiral.

The three-dimensional map tilts alarmingly to one side. The senior nav, who has been tasked with teaching Quill the basics, makes a strangled sound in her throat and darts to rescue it. Yondu doesn't much care if she manages. Piloting them into the nearest black hole would be preferable, right now.

“What?” he says, after too many empty seconds have passed. Then louder - “ _What_ _?_ ”

Kraglin shifts uncomfortably. “He's jokin', boss.”

“Well... Well yeah! Why wouldn't he be? Quill?”

“Boss?”

“Scrubs for a week. Confined to ship. Dismissed.”

Quill's cheeky grin folds. “What? Boss! No – no you can't... I'm supposed to go on a mission next week, remember? In the  _Milano_ _!_ Y'know, the ship  _you promised_ I could have, soon as I earned back the units! How'm I supposed to make mint now? You can't  _ground me_ like this, you ain't my fucking dad!”

He should know by now, that telling Yondu he can't do something only makes him more intransigent. The d-word (forbidden partially because the crew don't need  _more_ reason to whisper that their cap'n's gone soft, mostly because Yondu's terrified by how much he likes it) doesn't help Quill's cause.

Yondu draws himself up. His lungs fill in preparation to yell. But before they can balloon to their maximum, Kraglin speaks.

“Boss, c'mon. It was just a joke.”

Yondu's knucklebones stand out against the blue. “Yeah well,” he snarls. “There's some things ya just don't joke about.”

Kraglin freezes like those same knuckles have met his cheek.

He won't confront Yondu about whatever's pissed him off. Not here, not in front of the rabble – most of whom have turned to watch this latest conflict, with expressions that range between interest, boredom, and longing for popcorn. But for a moment, as Yondu glowers up into his pinched white face, he could've sworn that Kraglin is tempted.

Then the moment's gone. Kraglin shakes his head, thin mouth down-twisted. He stomps to the other side of the bridge. He's enforcing their separation of his own volition – which means the game ain't nearly so fun. Yondu blinks after him.

“What crawled up his ass an' died?”

Quill shoves his arm. Lightly. Which is lucky for him, else he'd have finished this day with an arrow rammed up his nostril – or at least, Yondu would've made him believe it. “Apologize!”

Yondu looks at him like he's stupid. In his opinion, the simile is unnecessary. Quill must've been smacked on the head and reduced to a medical-grade imbecile while he wasn't looking. Why else would he think this is  _Yondu's_ fault? “Huh?”

Quill rolls his eyes as if _he's_ the dim-witted one. “Whatever you did, you oughta apologize! That's when you say 'sorry' – in case you don't know how.”

Yondu draws out his sneer until Quill squirms under its yellowed gleam. He turns in a whirl of grubby leather.

_Say sorry._

Him, a Ravager captain? As if.

While the kid might be the dullest bulb of the bunch, he still thinks twice before barging Yondu again. It's gratifying though, to watch him slope to Kraglin in some misguided effort to console him, and be unceremoniously ordered to fuck off.

Yondu sniggers. Then hastily glances around, in case anyone heard.

Heads duck to their consoles. Nobody makes eye-contact. Yondu was on edge to begin with, now more than ever thanks to Kraglin's hissy-fit. Of course, he's convinced that his cool composure is unshakeable. But from the way the comms crew are fiddling with wires and resoldering circuit boards with an industry Yondu's never seen outside of a crisis, and the navs are plotting completely pointless tertiary and quaternary routes in an effort to look busy, his Bridge crew ain't fooled.

Still, so long as none of them _harass_ him about it, Yondu ain't honor-bound to butcher them. Rookies are a bugger to train up after all. He'd rather have experienced hands manning these consoles, which glitch whenever they cross solar turbulence.

No, there's zero point in fretting over Kraglin – if fretting is even a thing that men like Yondu Udonta do. Not while there's work to be done. Jobs to be organized with what few individual contractors are willing to risk Stakar's wrath, ships to hunt, and Stakar himself to nobble over a lil' incident involving a derelict cruiser that bore the telltale scorches of solar wings when Yondu's crew arrived. 

Yondu clomps to his chair. He slumps onto it sideways, kicking his legs over one arm and leaning against the other.

Then he catches Kraglin sneaking peeps. The man stands half-immersed in pale green holodiscs: contracts for their next set of jobs, due to be signed off by cap'n or mate. His eyes, while they never linger, trace the shape of Yondu's crossed thighs in the reflection off the viewscreen.

Yondu hastily rearranges. He sits upright, soldier-stiff, and stares into the blurred constellations ahead. They fragment into discernable patterns for the splitmost of seconds. Time warps around the _Eclector's_ stout nosecone, before the stars catch up with the rest of space's distorted fabric and whizz past at lightspeed.

Dammit, has Kraglin always been this obvious? Or has Yondu just been too blind to see it? Right now it's as if Kraglin's gaze is tactile, trailing a delicate feather up and down his calves...

Fuck. _Fuck_ _._ This is serious. No wonder Quill thought that quip of his was so funny. Well, Yondu won't stand for it any longer. It's time to set things straight, pun intended

Which is why, as shifts change and rosters rotate, Yondu waits until the last man has filed out before he clamps shut the vacuum seal and smacks his palm on the biolock.

“Obfonteri,” he growls.

Kraglin, slouched with one shoulder propped on the glass, grunts in affirmation. His surly posture says he's been expecting this. Yondu crosses his arms and stands with legs spread – then, after a moments thought, closes 'em up again.

“You an me, boy? We gonna have us a talk.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feed me your comments x


	3. Little Talks

The talk goes something like this:

“You ain't allowed to look at me no more.”

“What the fuck?”

“You heard me. Folks might start getting the wrong idea. Now fuck off to bed, and don't let me see ya at mess tomorrow.”

Yondu expects that to be the end of it, because surely the man he promoted to first mate would never wilfully disobey him. But apparently, he doesn't know Kraglin quite as well as he thinks. The lanky piss-streak unreels to his full height and steps forwards, eyes blade-sharp to hide their hurt. “Sir, with all due respect, yer being an a-hole.”

Was a time when he'd be brazen about it. When he'd say “You love this a-hole” and blow him a mocking kiss. That time is over. If Kraglin can't take locker-room banter for what it is – or Bridge banter, or M-ship banter, or wherever else they may be – Yondu's gotta come down hard (just not _cum hard._ ) He's gotta be firm with him ( _firm,_ that is; not stiff). Bust Kraglin's balls a bit; that's all he means (no, not like that).

Nevertheless, the tease is primed on his tongue. When he swallows, it tastes bitter.

“And you ain't followin' my orders, _Obfonteri_. Ya lookin' for a stint in brig?”

“I thought,” says Kraglin, through clenched teeth, “that you an' me were gonna pretend like nothin' happened.”

“Yeah! Nothin' happened! The hell you talkin' 'bout, Obfonteri?”

Kraglin doesn't look angry. Just _disappointed_. That's so much worse. Yondu knows how to handle men's rage. Perhaps that's what he's trying to do here, he muses as his first mate stalks away, neck hunched so his cervical vertebrae stick out like the mangled fin-struts Yondu hides under high collars and cravats. Make Kraglin mad at him. Then maybe he'll stop looking so damn _regretful_.

Yondu hates that expression. Like all of this is his own damn fault, and Kraglin's aiming an internal diatribe at himself so Yondu doesn't have to. Whenever he's around his wonky scowl, all Yondu's gonna be able to think about is cracking a joke, sharing a story. A distracted captain's bad for business, so avoiding Kraglin is clearly the only option.

 

* * *

 

Yondu slopes to his cabin at the start of the night cycle, having allowed a generous quarter hour for Kraglin to clear the way. The opposite door is shut.

For a minute he stands in front of it, just looking. Ain't often he sees this side of the metal. Their rooms sit at the end of a corridor, the shared bathroom forming the dead-end wall. During the daytime, this deck bustles with Ravagers tramping to and from the Bridge. But at this time of night, it's near barren. The skeleton crew know better than to disturb them, as they've learned from experience that a sleep-deprived captain is three times more prone to murder. Right now, Yondu and Kraglin are the only lifeforms around - save for the lice.

Yondu scratches contemplatively at his armpit. Usually, they spend their out-of-hours shifts together. Nothing special: just lounging in each other's cabins and playing stupid question games ( _W_ _hat heist would you pull, if you could? What would be your team of choice? If you had to pick any ship to outfly a Nova squadron with, which would it be?_ ) Sometimes they snigger at choice passages from those romance-datapads, which Yondu only keeps because he ain't yet gotten around to tossing them into the matter processor. Occasionally, they invite Quill.

There's a rumble from the swoop of overhead pipes, which funnel water from the boilers direct to their bathroom. The splosh startles Yondu out of whatever reverie he'd fallen into.

He scoffs, and shakes his head at himself. The hell's he doing, studying the chips and pockmarks from mutinies past that decorate Kraglin's door? When he marches into his room, he resolves not to think about how empty it looks without a Hraxian and a Terran cluttering the corners – and he almost manages it too.

 

* * *

 

Sleep eludes him. If he's awake he wants to keep his hands busy – but arousal eludes him as well. All chances of a jerk-off are culled by the memory of Kraglin's mopey face.

It's like a wet flannel that wrings over Yondu's groin. Even his cock-plates feel flaccid. That's impressive being as they're cartilage, overlapping in a series of scale-like links. Each of the five is chunky as the rest of him. They're flexible to an extent, tapering as they approach the head, but solid to the touch. Nevertheless, the whole navy contraption keeps flopping about, and after ten minutes Yondu is jerking more out of stubbornness than enjoyment. He gives in only when his hands get that sting that foretells blisters.

Nope. No chance of an orgasm to make this day a little more shiny around the edges. Only the tang of his own frustrated sweat, the overheated gum of his chest to his underjacket, and the lingering construct of Kraglin's face that haunts his mind's eye.

That's oddly particular, as if Yondu's memorized every detail over the years without realizing it.

Grunting, he prods his sore palm like he's testing raw steak. He rolls to the bedside. His boots and coat lie piled in a midden of patchwork spacegrime. Yondu rests socked feet on the floor one by one, pants still gaping, and listens for the clunk of the flusher that means Kraglin's finished in the bathroom.

They've washed up together a coupla times. That would be unthinkable, had Kraglin been anyone else. There's a reason Yondu's shirt only comes off when he's gazing out at his crew from behind a one-way window on Contraxia, a robochick depowering on her battery plinth. But after the gnarliest missions, the week-long smoke-spewing chases through deepspace that leave a man simultaneously high on adrenaline and weary to the bone, there ain't no one who cares enough to enquire about the stitches and the slices, or the lumps of truncated crest that give Yondu's spine the appearance of a half-chewed fish bone.

Kraglin's good like that. He knows when to keep his mouth shut, and even when he sticks his foot in it, he's quick to back off. Hell, if he weren't carrying a torch for his cap'n, they could still be friends.

But that torch threatens the stability of the little world Yondu's built himself, among a crew who fear him and respect him in equal measure, and occasionally grudgingly like him too. They're never showering together again. Hell, next time they dock for careening Yondu might have Kraglin's entrance sealed up completely, squeezing filler-fluid into the hinges and letting it set so that you'd need X-ray vision to tell there was ever a door in the first place.

Still grumbling under his breath, he opens the nearest drawer. He fishes until he finds what he's looking for amid the stew of arrow-polishing rags, patch repair kits, and holey old underwears. They're yaka-rocks. The bona fide deal – touching 'em makes fizzles puff in Yondu's implant (technically impossible, being as there ain't no nerve endings there; but that sounds better than 'fizzles puff in his phantom crest, which he swears he still feels brush on doorways').

He burgled them off a Kree ship this time last astral year, and has spent the interim hewing them into shape. It won't look as pretty as what's currently lodged in his skull. But his implant, sleek though it might be, is cast from an alloy blend, not pure ore. It was the best the Kree could get their hands on at the time. However, since then their conquests have expanded beyond the boundaries of the Andromeda galaxy, to Alpha Centauri and beyond.

While the primitive population (Yondu refuses to think of them in more familiar terms) destroyed most of the yaka before it could fall into hostile hands, it ain't like they conducted a thorough geological survey for the stuff. A few caves have slipped under the radar. It's from those caves – burrowed into mountains that overlook the scorched and sand-blasted plains, delving deep under the poisoned ocean – that Yondu's ruddy rocks, leaning against each other in their nest of tatty fabric, are chiselled.

Yondu turns them over and over. He wonders whether all of Alpha Centauri's native minerals evoke this strange sense of _oneness._ The slavers weren't big on cultural education, but Yondu knows the name of his tribe – the Zatoan – and their god, Anthos. He learned it from the older boys and girls he was sold alongside, who whispered prayers in their pens until they were whipped to silence, often permanently.

Yondu plonks the rocks on his desk and his ass on the chair. If insomnia's determined to gnaw, he might as well dedicate the yawn-cracking hours before his brain catches up with his sleepy body to something useful.

The work soothes him. He's got a pop-up lathe: a tiny thing of red holomatter that vibrates at a blur and makes a mosquito-like whine when activated. He runs it over the rock until its layers flake like sunburnt skin, shaping it to the curve of his skull.

It's repetitive and simple. It ought to be mindless too – yet Yondu's still ticks over.

 _Yer bein' an a-hole,_ Kraglin accused. And while Yondu ain't conceding no faults, perhaps he's been a tad... hasty.

Kraglin can't help the way he is. Yondu ain't no Evolutionist; he gets that. If it's a comparison he's after, he supposes he can liken Kraglin's preferences to how he himself ain't comfortable stripping down with anyone who's rocking tissue and meat in their frontal cortex, as opposed to wiring. Unlike living women, bot-hookers are guaranteed to stop when you say so, and they can be programmed to avoid touching scars.

His lathe scratches the surface. Yondu cusses, shakes out his wrist, and sets to smoothing the slice, tongue poking his cheek in time with the whir of peeling stone.

Why's he so pissed off about this? Why's he so convinced that Kraglin's confession means something – anything – has changed?

Is it because he feels threatened?

The microtool scythes off at an angle. It narrowly avoids his steadying hand. Yondu jumps. Switches it off, and sets it down with a definitive clink. He rubs his crusty eyes, yawns again, and recoils at the stinky blow-back.

Definitely time for bed, if his brain's feeding him nonsense-talk like that. Threatened? Him? By _Kraglin?_

Not bothering to strip, he collapses face-first on the pillow. Out of sheer spite at himself, he resolves to be nicer to Kraglin in the morning.

 

* * *

 

Only he told the idjit not to show his face at mess, and it seems Kraglin took him seriously.

Yondu can't spot him anywhere. He scans back and forth along the rows of Ravagers, champing their morning rations. His gut houses a churning milkshake of frustration and guilt, something he feels so rarely that he mistakes it for nausea.

Then, between the coats of tanned leather and synthwool, he spies a pair of orange earphones.

“Quill!”

The kid turns in his direction. He lifts one foam circle. The warble of _Moonage Daydream_ is just audible against the backdrop of chewing and gulping, the clack of spoons and the smack of lips. “Whassat?”

No time to rib the brat for lack of respect. “Where's Krags? You seen him?”

“Did you apologize yet?” Yondu resists the urge to strangle him with his Walkthing wire. It would be difficult at this distance, but perhaps if he whistled _really carefully..._ “Of course you didn't. I dunno, man. Guess he'll find you when he's ready.”

Great. He's glaring like Yondu's the villain in one of the Terran movies he's always on about; the _Vel-vett van Rahgnarr_ to his _Launce Stah-grawve_ , the _Han_ to his _Broos Lee_. Yondu rolls his eyes.

“You start on that week of scrubbing yet?” he asks. “'Cause I can think of a few more chores to add to yer list...”

Quill pales, grabs his bowl, and scarpers. But the brat's misfortune ain't nearly so funny when Kraglin ain't around to share a smirk.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Yondu is The Dumbest when it comes to deciphering his own emotions. Tell me your thoughts!**


	4. A Ravager Holiday

Next job's on Dizerall. That's a common haunt for smugglers of their ilk: an oceanic world, speckled with the occasional island whose sands blur through all shades of a sunset, from rich golds to pale conch-shell pinks, and darker, fiery reds. 

The Xandarians would love to terraform it into yet another identical tourist resort, if they only knew its whereabouts. This place got wiped from official maps back in the years when Stakar said Yondu's name without a spit for a suffix. Nowadays it exists only on pirate-radar: a small planet tumbling eternally around a triplicate dwarf-star bundle, leapfrogging from one gravitational field to the next.

It's frequented by Yondu's richer clientele. And those other pesky ninety-nine factions of course, who like to pretend they wouldn't be fooled by a lonely old god who wants to see his offspring, and is willing to reward the couriers most handsomely. Yondu hopes he doesn't run into none of those. He's gotta confront Stakar eventually about his forays into Yondu's territory, but that day ain't today.

He contacts their man before docking, requesting holovid proof of the goods – and conveniently scoping his holding bay for guards, cameras, and assorted booby-traps. Admittedly, 'docking' is generous. In a bid to keep it from falling to Imperial hands, Dizerall is a designated quiet-zone. Only the most rudimentary infrastructure is permitted – so, in Ravager terms, a bar, a whorehouse, and a gambling den. Ain't even a shitter. You wanna go number-two, you squat over the nearest saline water body like everyone else.

Yondu lets Horuz handle landing. Their shuttle thrums to rest atop the endless ocean. Waves gust away from her undercarriage, vapor hissing as jets scythe water. The shuttle's natural buoyancy will keep her afloat. She'll bob here amongst the other 'birds until their crews are sober enough to make the swim back from the island, or die trying.

The 'paddle', more like. The cut-off is deceptively steep, for such calm waters. But before you reach that sudden plunge, the incline is as shallow as a floodplain. The sandy bottom is visible, shimmering with glossy pebbles and chunks of coral, which are sharp enough to chew through the soles of any boots less robust than those of a Ravager. Sunlight shatters across the ripples, reflections glancing in every direction.

It’s damn near beautiful - or as close to it as their kind know. Yondu takes great delight in ruining the pretty picture. He pops the cockpit and jumps in – shoving Half-nut out first, when he catches the boy pulling a gargoylish medley of faces out the open hatch.

He immediately starts to thrash. “I can't swim, I can't swim! I'm dyin' – oh, stars, somebody help me!”

If Yondu's submerged only to the pectorals, Half-nut’s entire ribcage would poke above the waterline, if he could only remember how to stand. Yondu hears his men enter the sea behind him. He can identify them from the sploshes, as differing body masses and personalities impact water. The big cannonball is Quill. The loud crack of a bellyflop? Gef. Tullk and Oblo make efficient plops that barely disturb the surface.

He doesn't let himself consider what Kraglin might've sounded like. Kraglin ain't here.

There's little current to speak of. No moons mean no tides, and this ocean is stirred only by tectonic plate-drift and the rake of the broiling breeze. There's a faint tug towards the drop off, but it ain't enough to carry a full-grown man along.

Yondu keeps one eye on Quill, just in case. He needn't have worried. Kid lopes towards him wearing a grin as sunny as the cloudless skies. He untucks his headphones from where he'd wrapped them in his collar to protect against the spray.

He's fast approaching the age where he won't need Yondu to look out for him no more. Ergo, Yondu'd better start finding other folks who are as fun to mock.

Half-nut is a prime contender. He flails by, arms flapping like the world's most ungainly swan, making a high, goosey honk in the back of his throat. His wet hair comprises half his bodyweight, plastered to his face and neck in streaks.

“Don'tchu know not to thrash about?” Yondu asks. He pitches his voice above the slap of hands on water, the churn of boots through the sand. “Attracts sharks, that does.”

Half-nut's screeches amplify.

Kraglin would be giggling right about now. Swallowing it, of course, because Half-nut holds grudges. But when Yondu catches his eye, he'd wink, and Kraglin would let that gulped-down smile bloom, thin lips curving up at the edges...

Kraglin also tends to stop Yondu's games before they get nasty. Not by questioning him in public - never that. But a quiet ‘captain’ would have Yondu stomping to Half-nut, dragging him upright by the shoulderplate and pounding his back until he regurgitates every fluid ounce of saltwater that he's ingested as he screams.

Yondu watches Half-nut flounder, fighting the ocean as if it’ll release him if he only punches it hard enough. M-ships wheel above. The bass note of their thrusters is all that prevents their shadows from being mistaken for gulls. 

Kraglin might be in one of them. Or he could have stayed aboard the galleon, opting out of a sojourn in the sun. Ain't no way for Yondu to tell.

Eventually, when it becomes obvious Yondu means to let Half-nut stumble off the incline and drown for real, Tullk intervenes. He hooks Half-nut next time he scrabbles by. He stares grimly ahead while the idiot clings to him, all bulging eyes and wet hair, shivering like one of the flimsy wenches from Yondu's datapads.

“Good to go, sir?” he asks, jerking his chin at the shore.

Yondu blinks. His gaze drops from those faraway ships, which duck and weave around each other, occasionally brushing wingtips and exchanging cusses over the comms. The water is lukewarm, nearing skin temperature. It swirls around his spread fingertips, resistance making his hand feel like a flipper as he wafts it back and forth.

It's a quarter-klik slog to the beach. But after being cooped up on ships and satellites for a month, nothing but lifeless metal under his treads, Yondu relishes the chance to stretch his legs planetside. It ain't like Kraglin's presence is mandatory for him to enjoy himself, right? And anyway, he’s got a job to do.

“C'mon,” he growls, and leads the way.

  

 

 

* * *

 

Dizerall is the closest to comfort a Ravager knows. Sure, you’ll spend the next fortnight picking sand out of orifices you didn't know you had, but for the duration of their stay it's practically a holiday. Yondu's sure to swing by here once a year. He’s learned the hard way that men require more than basic provisions to live. _You need your gladiator rings as well as your gruel_ , as they used to say back in the slave pens - although as he'd been star attraction in those rings, before he was bought by an Accuser more interested in conquering new dominions than pitting specimens against each other for profit, Yondu's reluctance to embrace this mindset is understandable.

Still, Dizerall ain't bad. A few cycles spent easing frustrations with bot-hookers or dice, with temperatures warm enough for even the most cold-blooded not to have to wear four layers of leather, plus a happy captain to boot? You can't go amiss.

This time, only two of those predictions come to pass.

He's fucked three bots since he arrived, and he's down to his undershirt – that's retained only as an afterthought to hide the scars, with lovely sweat circles under the pits. It's hard to be angry when your body insists on draping itself in every patch of sunlight, rolling around, and generally soaking up the rays until he's glutted on vitamin D.

Yondu does his best regardless.

“That jackass,” he hisses, stalking from the rendezvous. He's flanked by his brightest and best – who are looking duller and dumber than ever, given that they spent the first part of the day sunbathing. By the time Yondu realized what had happened and summoned his posse, half were drunk and the others nurturing heatstroke. But so long as they wobble in straight lines and try to look menacing, Yondu can forgive them.

The contact, on the other hand? Well, he’ll get what he has coming.

“He thinks he can use me to do his dirty work? I got dirty work of my own to handle!”

This is the part where Kraglin asks what he's gonna do to him. Then Yondu can start on a list of tortures, whose goriness increases in conjunction with the drain of blood from Quill's face. Kraglin sniggers, Kraglin tells him which he likes best, and the pair of them stalk off to enact those choice favorites on the dumbass who thought Yondu would be fooled by scattering a handful of pure huffer crystals over the top quarter of each barrel, and packing the rest with sawdust and corrupted byproduct.

It's unfortunate that he chose to remotely control this deal. For him, that is. The march to his ship, water-docked on the island's far side, only gives Yondu more time to think up punishments.

There is, however, a recurring flaw in his plan. _Kraglin ain't here._

Yondu's barely started describing how he's gonna trepan a hole in the top of his contact's head and crush his body until the brain squirts out like yogurt from those squeezy-tube things that were all they could get Quill to eat when he was tiny. The kid's already making dangerous _hurk_ sounds in the back of his throat, and his complexion is a pallid, sickly green.

As for Kraglin? Well, Yondu's first mate (who'd sworn himself to his flame through plasma bolts and dogfights, til death they fucking part) has neglected to show. Chances are he’s still in orbit - as far from Yondu as he can get without deserting.

After the first three days of silence, Yondu started fretting that maybe he’d done just that. Up and split, headed for the open stars. But Kraglin’s M-ship is parked in the hangar every time he checks, and the rest of the crew insist that Kraglin’s on board, when Yondu hauls 'em up against walls and demands they relinquish his last known whereabouts. 

He's just not where Yondu is. Conveniently. Constantly. With a regularity that vastly reduces the possibility of coincidence.

Yondu's combed his outfit for the tracker. Nothing. But he refuses to admit defeat and comm the man – can't have him thinking he's smart enough to outwit his cap'n. And so the game continues. Kraglin clocks his hours, so Yondu doesn't even have the excuse to brig him. He attends to all those annoying scraps of upkeep that are fundamental to the smooth operation of a ship, but which Yondu can't be assed to deal with – traipsing around the fusion core with a rad-counter, overseeing patches on the leaky fuel pipes, running M-ship stock checks and the like.

When Yondu decides that enough is enough and stomps down into his ship's rusty bilges to find him, Quill lagging moodily after, he emerges grot-stained and grime-blackened and unsuccessful. His Bridge crew inform him he's just missed Obfonteri, who swung by on a surprise inspection.

It's infuriating. It's infuriating because it shouldn't _be_ infuriating; because Yondu doesn't give two whits about the scrawny a-hole of a Hraxian he hoiked from the mining colonies. If Taserface quit talking to him, he'd be relieved. If Narblik or Half-nut or any of the other boys pulled a disappearing act, he'd raise a toast to their passing. Hell, he could even handle a few days without Quill by his side. But Kraglin?

It ain't been a week, and Yondu's practically frothing. He needs to kill something. Slowly.

The crooked merchant suffices. He's a lot more crooked by the time Yondu's finished with him, and in some new and exciting ways.

Quill doesn't have the stomach for it. He goggles at the new kinks in the man's spine, ribs poking through the skin like bloody fingers, and runs to the corner to puke.

Yondu lets the sound of his retching, the dying man's snivels, and the gentle pap of waves fade. He stands with his head bowed, and wonders whether Kraglin'd give this an eight or nine out of ten.

Dammit. Okay. He misses him.

It's weak and sentimental, and Yondu hates the thought as soon as it settles in his brain. But it's true - or at least, he finds himself hard-pressed to deny it.

A friend. That's what Kraglin is to him. Someone Yondu trusts to see him at his lowest: sick, snoozing, sloshed, even (on rare occasions) shirtless. Ravager captains don't soften up to folks easily. Anyone they show overt favor to tends to be culled by the lower ranks, especially on a ship like Yondu's, which exists a beat out of sync with Ogordian code. No, friends are a rare breed indeed. Practically an endangered species.

Endangered enough that Yondu is willing to go back on his three most strident self-imposed rules, which he muttered to himself as he stalked away from the captain's table, Stakar's banishment ringing around the inside of his head.

_Never beg. Never be owned. Never apologize._

But what the hell. Rules are made to be broken. Yondu's gonna hunt Kraglin down. Then he's gonna whistle until he shuts his mouth and listens, get up in that scruffy face of his, and tell him that he's _sorry_.

And if Quill dares to say 'I told you so'? Yondu will fry him for supper. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Comments are my lifeblood. I adore anyone who leaves them!**


	5. An Awkward Apology

He plots his sorry like he would a heist. He figures it'll make it easier if he observes the situation from a distance, so he maps out the details on a holopad, projected across his overflowing desk.

The letters dip and rise in conformity with the stacked pads, datasticks and old carbon-copy blueprints, which are piled haphazardly and pinned in place with the aid of trinkets-come-paperweights. It's kinda like Yondu's brain made material: a hodgepodge of job specs, client details, and trashy souvenir mementos, no space remaining for sentiment.

Or at least, that's what he likes to tell himself.

 _Kraglin's into guys,_ he writes. The holopen nib gathers his chosen color from the light-prism, as if the photons are iron filings in a magnetic drawing box. Spiky Kree letters hover midair.

His masters didn't have much use for a literate battle slave. But Yondu learned the basics. His small size, in comparison with the other fighting-classes, and his ability to whistle so softly that it was barely discernible from a breath, made him an asset on infiltration missions that demanded something more erudite than 'smash' and 'kill'.

He'd learned so that he could spy, and he'd nourished the skill after Stakar broke his collar, mostly because back then he'd been convinced that the slightest slip would see him returned, and he needed to be useful to keep his freedom. There hadn't been much time for schooling in between pulling con-jobs and cracking bank vaults. But Stakar had been a surprisingly patient teacher, when it was just the pair of them alone.

...And if Yondu keeps thinking on this subject, he'll only convince himself he misses that a-hole. Ridiculous. You can't miss someone who discards you like gunk scraped off their boot after a trek across Knowhere. Especially not when he impinges on your territory whenever he sees a fat trade ship cross the no-man's space between Kree-Xandarian warfronts.

But you can miss the idjit who stood by you, even as the flame patch was torn from your sleeve.

And so, here it is – a fragmentary chronicle, relating Yondu's version of events.

_Kraglin's into me_

_I ain't into him_

_Kraglin's pissed – why?_

_Cause I avoided him. Why'd I avoid him?_

_So I wouldn't flirt with him. Don't wanna lead him on none_

_Why'd you flirt with him in the first place?_

_Because I flirt with everyone_

_So why're you stopping now?_

_Because it's different with him_

_Why, cause he likes you?_

_Yeah_

_Why's that make it different?_

_Because_

That's as far as he gets. Next moment the door buzzes open. Quill saunters in, the subject of Yondu's scribblings in tow.

Yondu lobs his stylus into the trash.

He spares a moment to cuss as it rattles down the chute, clatter fading as it somersaults through the helix of pipes that ferry waste into the _Eclector's_ matter converters.

Hell. Like that weren't obvious.

Yondu dismisses the writing with a curt flick of his wrist, wiping the holopad clean.

“The fuck you want?” he asks. He remains hunched over the desk until the last Kree sigils have been erased, nothing left but blank white light. “And why the heck didn't ya knock? Ain't I taught you nothin', boy? S'basic manners, that.”

Quill bristles. “I _did!_ Ain't my fault you were too busy writing in your diary to notice!”

“I don't got no  _diary!_ ”

As tempting as it is to goad Quill into a quarrel, Yondu knows he'll only use it as an excuse to avoid what needs to be said. Kraglin lurks in the doorway, not far enough over the threshold for the automatic airlock to close. Yondu sneers.

“Dammit, Obfonteri. Geddin or get out; I don't give a shit either way.” Except he _does_ , and he has to school his face when Kraglin makes the right decision, in case it tries to broadcast his relief. “Alright, boys. What'chu want?”

“I want,” Quill starts, grabbing Kraglin's wrist to drag him forwards, “you two to stop arguing. Seriously. It puts everyone on edge, and when the crew's on edge they're eight-point-three-seven percent more likely to eat me.” He catches Yondu's blink at the specificity of that statistic. “I, uh, may have hijacked a few comps on Bridge to run an algorithm. Whatever. Look, point is, this is bad for the crew. _Obviously_ I don't give a shit about either of you as people...”

“ _Obviously_ ,” Kraglin and Yondu echo. They catch each other's eyes. Yondu gets in a quick smile before Kraglin darts his gaze to the side.

“-So I don't care what sort of domestic you guys are going through. So long as it stops. Are we understood?”

Boy must've been hit on the head, if he thinks he can talk to his cap'n like that. But Yondu'll cook up punishment later - or cook up Quill; depends on how peckish he is. For now, he's gonna make the most of this before Kraglin stops glancing wistfully at the door and makes a dash for it.

“Boy,” he rumbles, pointing. “Out. I'll deal with you tomorrow. Krags? You stay.”

Quill looks tempted to argue. One dark look from Yondu quells it. He's already pushed his luck several parsecs further than normal; he'd better be grateful he ain't being sent off sprinting with an arrow jabbing his backside. He stalks away, grumbling about how his mediating skills are underappreciated. And then there are two.

One tall, one short. One skin and bone, one muscle and meat. Both looking anywhere but each other.

Yondu's first to break the silence. “Wanna drink?” he asks, producing a bottle from the ongoing demolition site of his desk. Kraglin sulks most unattractively. He smells like he's been at the Huffer cigarettes - a-hole keeps promising he'll break the habit, but something tells Yondu that now ain't the time to nag.

“Thought me offerin' you one was what got me in trouble in the first place, boss.”

“Aw, cut it. Ya ain't in trouble.”

“Naw? Coulda fooled me this past week, cap'n.” Kraglin crosses his arms when Yondu holds out the bottle. Then, when he stubbornly keeps it outstretched long after a comfortable period has past, rolls his eyes and grabs it. “There. So you don't lock out yer damn elbow joint, sir. Look, ya want me off this crew so bad, you can fire me, chuck me out the airlock, whatever. Just don't expect me t'go quietly.”

“I don't want'chu off this crew.”

“It ain't my fault, alright? There's you, acting like yer hungry for my dick -”

“Banter,” Yondu insists, fist clenching where it rests on the tabletop. “That were _banter._ ”

“Well, 'scuse me for being desperate! You an' me, sir, we been friends for how long?” There it is – the 'f' word. And not the usual one that peppers Yondu's dialect. Why can't that be enough for Kraglin, he wants to ask? Why can't he stick it to bot-hookers like any other Ravager (he's sure they come in male) and leave out all this  _romance_ and _relationships_ malarkey?

Kraglin takes a grumpy swig. He shudders at the fizz – this horse piss has been fermenting since before Yondu made captain. His next words are interspersed with burps.

“Since before you... _uurp..._ Stakar... _Urp._ Well, y'know. _Uurp._ I stood by ya then, didn't I?”

Yondu can't deny it.

“And I'm always gonna, whether or not you see me as I see you. When I said it doesn't change nothin', I meant it.”

“Well, so did I!”

“Yeah? Cause ya sure ain't actin' like it, boss.”

This is an unprecedented amount of lip. Were Kraglin anyone else – or were Kraglin any less in the right – Yondu would smack him and cart him off to the brig. Possibly even whistle. As it is, he settles for sinking on his chair and waggling his fingers for the bottle.

“I dunno. Look. It's confusin'. I known you all these years, but I ain't never known this.”

Kraglin's scowl intensifies. His face isn't softened by the alcohol, or the harsh overhead lights, which turn his bone structure into a topographical map of highlights and shadowed pits. “That I fuck men, boss? Or that I wanna fuck you?”

Yondu manages not to choke. Barely.

“Both,” he says, after concentrating for a full minute on forcing the burning liquor down the right tube, warming his stomach rather than his lungs. “You ain't never said nothin'.”

“Ain't the sort of thing that's shouted about, is it now, sir? Can ya imagine? Next Taserface'd be claimin' I slept my way to the top.”

He has a point. He's also shooting longing looks at the bottle. Yondu empathizes; conversations like these are easier without sobriety weighing on your mind. He passes back, wiping spit and spirits from his chin. His gaze climbs the scraggly ladder of Kraglin's throat, catching on the rung of his Adam's apple, which bobs up and down as he swallows.

Perhaps – just perhaps – he can see something attractive there.

Just, y'know. Aesthetic appreciation. For all his furry, scrawny, pale-skinned oddity, Kraglin has a nice pair of baby-blues – even when they're bloodshot from sleepless boozers, huffer ciggies, and stress.

But first, there's an assumption he's got to address. Yondu clears his throat. “So ya wanna. Uh. Fuck me?”

It's not the verb he's quibbling. Just the syntax. Kraglin's face takes on a pinched quality Yondu associates with scolded children – namely Quill, after he's taken a tongue-lashing for almost getting his ass dead in a new and inventive way.

“So?” he mutters. He scuffs back and forth over Yondu's floor, leaning on one foot then the other. The chrome plates haven't been vacuumed since Yondu inherited the galleon from his predecessor, but that doesn't mean he wants Kraglin to draw crop circles on 'em with his rubber boot-treads.

He gestures to the bed. Then quickly says “Siddown, yer makin' me feel short” in case that's misconstrued.

That wins a whipcrack smirk, and a “Don't take much effort for that, sir”. Yondu's almost reluctant to dampen his smile, as he returns to the topic at hand. But Kraglin's made a dire miscalculation somewhere along the line, one that Yondu feels needs to be addressed.

He leans, elbows propped on his knees and his hands clasped loosely between. “Ya seriously think I'd be the one takin' it?”

Because that's kinda offensive. Right? Yondu's first to admit that he knows fuck all about the things that occur in Cleaning Closet 7A on Z-deck. But doesn't _power_ and _authority_ imply a certain dynamic, one which ought to carry over into the bedroom?

Evolutionist planets tend towards traditional values. Carrying genders – no matter how many or how disparate those genders may be – are, on the whole, envisioned as the weaker of the binary (or the tertiary, quaternary, quinternary, you name it). Genitalia is correspondingly skewed – Yondu knows this from his intensive browsing of the bot-hooker libraries. Outies tend to infer siring ability, and innies the opposite. (Yondu's a bit of a complex case, what with his pouch and all - but as that's stitched up, it doesn't count.)

Ergo, doesn't it follow that sitting on dick makes you weak?

Yondu is anything but. He could kill Kraglin in twelve different ways without lifting an asscheek off his chair. And that's without prior brainstorming! Nope, at the end of the day, the guy's his lackey, not the other way around.

Kraglin shrugs, sheepish and small. “A fantasy's a fantasy, sir,” he says, more to the bottle than to Yondu. Then, after another messy swig leaves drips zigzagging through his stubble – and no, Yondu does _not_ follow them with his eyes; or if he does it's not out of _interest,_ just frustration that his first mate's letting good booze go to waste: “And hey. Don't knock it til you've tried it.”

“Yeah well.” Yondu reaches for the bottle, with full confidence it will be delivered. He manages to seal the rim to his lips before he throws back his head, preventing the glugging shower from upending over his lap. The last of the liquor vanishes into his gullet, and Yondu belches his victory. “That ain't gonna happen.”

Kraglin doesn't argue. “Sure, sir. Look, for the record? I'm sorry. M'sorry I made shit weird between us. M'sorry I ever brought it up.”

Some apology this is turning out to be. Saying sorry, Yondu discovers, is much like haggling - you don't give any more ground than you have to. But perhaps – just perhaps – he owes Kraglin something in return.

“Ain't yer fault,” he says gruffly, turning the bottle around and around, watching his handprints dissolve into smooth green glass. “Can't help the way yer made. An' – an' maybe I was a bit of a. A -”

“Cocktease, sir?”

Yondu's eyes thin. “Was gonna say _flirt._ ”

“Oh.” Kraglin coughs, eyeing up the door. “Sorry. D'you want me to go -?”

Yondu stares at him until he has the man squirming, perched on Yondu's bed with his back straight as a fuel rod and every muscle tense, legs folded to an acute angle so his feet rest flat on the floor. Then he rocks back on his chair and laughs. “You're jus' too darn fun. Dammit, Obfonteri. Alright, fuck off then, if you wanna. But I expect to see you on Bridge tomorrow. No more dancin' round me, understand?”

Kraglin's wise enough not to mention that Yondu's the one who ordered him away in the first place. He nods and creaks to his full height, mohawk brushing the hammocks of trinkets that Yondu keeps strung from his ceiling to stop himself stubbing his toes when he needs to piss at night. His hands look a heartbeat away from wringing, and his lip is snagged between his yellow top teeth and his lead bottom ones. He worries his lower jaw back and forth until the serrated incisors cut.

“Spit it out,” Yondu snaps, before he can focus on the blood-bead that wells over Kraglin's lip, then again after he licks it away.

“We're good, right? I know, you _said_ we are, and I said we are, but... We're good?”

“We're good,” Yondu confirms. This time, he means it. But before he lets Kraglin scarper, there's something he's gotta know - “Hey, Krags. Where's the tracker?”

“The what?”

“Y'know. When you was actin' all chicken -”

“Followin' yer orders, boss.”

Yondu snorts. “Whatever. Look, ya managed to creep around me for _weeks._ Ya must've been keepin' an eye on me somehow – but I can't find nothin'.” He'd even checked his pouch, nose crinkling as fingers crested staples. Sure, there was no logical way Kraglin could've snuck anything there, least of all without Yondu noticing. But better safe than sorry.  “The hell did you put it?”

Now that they're fast friends again, Kraglin decides all those Code rubrics, which dictate a first mate's deference to his captain, can relax. His mouth quirks up. “Wouldn't ya like to know.”

“I could _order_ ya to tell me.”

“Ain't that kinda like admittin' defeat, boss?”

“Not if I whistle.”

A sigh. “Yeah boss. Not if ya whistle.”

“Good boy. Hey - y'know what? Stay here after all. Ya can help me think of punishment for the kid, or somethin'.”

Kraglin returns Yondu's smirk – a touch slow, a touch diffident. But when Yondu fastballs him one of those cheesy Xandarian datapads, and demands that he do the funny voices, he complies.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thank you to all of my commenters! You are all such lovely people. Long may you bless my fics with your thoughts. xxx Ugggh this needs an edit but I'm too tired. It'll wait until morning! As always, my fics become more and more polished after uploading XD Don't worry - this isn't the end of the drama. The ongoing Obfonteri-Udonta relationship crisis has a long life ahead.**


	6. Another Bar, Another Drink

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CN: some casual and unthinking aphobia from Yondu.**

He makes good on his resolution to Be More Supportive To Your Gay First Mate (it's a working title) next time they make port.

The planet is small, relatively speaking. Not quite as off-grid as Dizerall - generators whirr on every building, bored into the metal like mechanical parasites. Artificial gravity-enhancers pulse away in its core. However, every now and again the solar harvesters flux and the power outage drops, and your next step carries you five meters rather than one.

It's terraformed crudely, as is the norm for smuggler satellites. Only the buildings have breathable air. The Ravagers snap on their spacemasks before they scatter to the markets: small nuggets that hook behind the ear and unfold to form interlocking plates of holo-metal.

They've arrived mid-spring. Spores drift lazily from the trees, whose canopies overhang the settlement in a shifting, lumpy carpet, blocking light from the faraway red giant. The spores are cute lil' things. Poofy and mallow-soft, squishy to the touch. Yondu would be tempted to pocket one for his dashboard, if he didn't know what they did to your lungs. The sight of a local hobo coughing up vegetable matter while roots swing from his bloody nostrils, is enough for Yondu to resist temptation.

He doesn't bother flicking a unit into the man's upturned cap. He'll be dead too soon for it to be of use to him.

Thank fuck he'd left Quill on the galleon. The boy's slogging through those scrub-shifts, which Yondu had promised him back when Quill thought it'd be hilarious to joke about his captain and mate having a lovers' tiff. Had he accompanied them on this mission, he would've smuggled a spore aboard despite Yondu's orders, pat-downs, and threats, and put the whole ship under quarantine.

Yondu steps from the gangplank, hearing the buzz and hiss as the airlock seals. The windows mist as it fills with sterilizing gas. Any biotic material left between those twinned plates of rubber-lined steel will have been eradicated, down to the smallest germ.

Yondu cups one of the spores as it floats around his head. It's almost perfectly round, shaped like a puffball-skirt. Its white fronds drift in a breeze too faint to feel. He lets it sit in his palm, shedding downy fuzz across his lovelines. Then resolutely crushes it.

“C'mon,” he says, collaring Kraglin around his neck. He hauls him from the shuttle's shadow, before he can skulk off on claims of engine-maintenance. “Boy, I'm gonna get'chu laid.”

Kraglin shifts boot to boot. “Sir, I don't think that's -”

“I'm the best dang wingman I know.” Yondu squeezes Kraglin against him. The spores secrete a slick gloss - he wipes the goo on Kraglin's poncho, and scowls when his hand comes back just as dirty. Their leathers stick and slide, oiled smooth as sealskin. “Don't'chu worry. You just concentrate on lookin' cute as a button, Kraggles. I'll find ya yer dream guy.”

He regrets it as soon as the words leave his mouth. Kraglin doesn't say 'I've already found him' – which is good, because Yondu doesn't want to kill him. 

He does look at Yondu though, for an uncomfortably long time. His spacemask may hide 'em from sight, but Yondu's imagination doesn't need a visual reference to conjure up those long-lashed, purty blue eyes.

Is this a good idea? He ain't just being cruel; upending a salt-shaker over the wound left by his rejection, and leisurely massaging the granules in?

No. He can't remember the last time he saw Kraglin take anyone of any gender aside into a private corner (although admittedly, he doesn't pay that much attention. When they’re planetside, he tends to have three bothookers on his lap at any one time, with six-plus tits between them). 

This ain't just Yondu speaking as Kraglin's friend. It's him laying down law as captain. Kraglin needs to wet his dick for the sake of his own damn mental health. Ain't good for a man, even a man-who-fucks-other-men, to sit idle as a jammed M-ship gun that’s been abandoned on one of Knowhere's mountainous scrapheaps. Yondu's gonna pry Kraglin from his shell if he has to rip him out by force.

 

* * *

  

Spores fritz and fizzle off the neon sign like bugs on a fly-zapper, exploding in asbestos-puffs. Evidently, this establishment doesn't much care for subtlety. Yondu leads the way. Only, after he's hauled Kraglin through the decontamination shower, the first thing the barman does after they've disengaged their masks is nod to Kraglin and greet him by name.

“Obfonteri. Long time.”

“No see,” Kraglin mutters. Yondu turns from one to the other. It's a rare day indeed, when his entrance doesn't make the patrons of a place unanimously break for the exit. Then his face splits in a massive, shit-eating grin.

“Ya been here before!”

“Yeah. S'the only joint on this block for. Um. Guys like me.”

Yondu spins through a full three-sixty, absorbing the musty, smoky atmosphere, coat steaming and skin prickling from the gamma-rad cleanse. Indeed, there are guys like Kraglin everywhere. Sat together on plump-pillowed sofas. Chatting around tables. Writhing to the throbbing electronic dance-shit that's being spewed out by the speakers in the middle of the floor. There's more than one tongue in a mouth, and definitely more than one hand in a back pocket.

Yondu pulls a face without quite meaning to. He schools it when he finds Kraglin watching him, gauging his reaction with slumped shoulders.

“Boss, ya don't gotta stay here. You go with the others -”

But Yondu's committed. He shakes his head, forces a smile, and smacks Kraglin on the back so hard that his ribs hit the bartop. “I ain't goin' nowhere. Friends, remember?”

Luckily, this place caters to scum. Their flame patches don't earn 'em sideways looks, let alone a wide berth. Yondu's mildly concerned that rumors about which way he bats will be churning through the gossip mill by the end of the night cycle - but morning's problems can wait until then, and it ain't like his rep is the squeakiest anyways. The grinning mugshot behind the bar, bounty a solid five-hundred K, reminds him of that.

He makes Kraglin fund his own drinks. When he forks out the dosh for a second shot, Kraglin ain't suspicious, knowing the titanium quality of his captain's liver from long nights spent together, pouring over chart-specs and empty hipflasks. He moans and drops his face into his hands though, when rather than downing it, Yondu scoots it along the bar.

It bangs the forearm of a big guy. Beefy-like. Hairy as Kraglin, under the pits and on the slice of chest that's visible through his string vest, but bald on top, like Yondu. Best of both worlds, right?

“Hey,” Yondu purrs. He dons his charming grin – the one he reserves for the ladies. He expects it to form stiffly, given the current subject of his attention. He's surprised (and disturbed) that he’s wrong. 

But hey. He's a con-artist. Trained up from young, first by the Kree and then by Stakar. Wearing masks comes second nature.

He swivels on his stool, leaning both elbows on the counter behind him, and smirks at the man over his shoulder plate. “My friend here was just sayin' he thinks yer cute.”

The man raises an eyebrow. Kraglin shrinks. He hides behind his captain as he's eyed up and down, until Yondu rolls his eyes and grabs him by the poncho neck, stilling him for the course of the inspection and circling a calming thumb over his neck tattoos.

Whatever the man sees, he ain't impressed. He nudges the shot away.

“Don't do twinks,” he grunts.

Kraglin sputters. “I ain't – the fuck? Aw hell. Cap'n. Look, if this is how you get yer kicks, good on ya. I know yer gonna do what ya want whether or not I okay it, but at least let me pick the guys?”

That's a fair compromise. Yondu stands, cracking his spine with a grumble about ingratitude. He stalks to retrieve the shot. He shows no fear, and feels none either, although he's stepping into the personal space of a man who would trump him a solid three times on the scales.

No need for it. Not when his arrow's strapped to his thigh.

Yondu ain't got a big rap-sheet, not this far into Skrull territory – too high a risk of pissing off the Empire to run a decent smuggling gig. His bounty’s all from the Kree. Skrulls are hell to deal with, once they infiltrate your ship, and Yondu'd rather steer clear of those frilly-chinned shapeshifters as much as possible. Unfortunately, as proven by this venture, 'as much as possible' doesn’t mean shit nowadays. The Ravagers go wherever work takes them, and as the years pass and Stakar's stranglehold on trade refuses to relent, those jobs become fewer, less well paid, and of a more dangerous quality.

But anyway – while he can only see one poster bearing his likeness pinned up behind the bar, Yondu's rep stretches from one quadrant edge to the other. Whoever this guy is, he ain't drunk enough to risk his wrath. He returns to his drink with a grunt, filtering beer through the hairs in his handlebar 'tasche.

Yondu grimaces. Ugh. Yeah, he sees why Kraglin ain't too sweet on this one. That'd totally itch between your legs – not that he's imagining it.

“Okay then,” he says, plonking the shot besides Kraglin's on the counter, leaving a slopped wet ring. He sucks the drops from his fingers, talking around them: “You choose.”

Kraglin swings his legs from under the bar, surveying the room. Yondu watches him watch the other men. He notices how he chews his cheek, nostrils flaring, whenever he catches a glimpse of skin, the join of a groping hand and a tented crotch on the dancefloor.

They're far enough from that floundering mass of bodies that the music is audible without being deafening – a feat of localized sound technology. The men grind against each other to a pulsing beat, an orgy with clothes on. While it don't do nothing for his nether regions (any tingling's just anticipation, for the five bot-hookers he's gonna treat himself to in reward for a job well done) Yondu's gotta admit that he's fascinated.

Only with how they all move together so seamlessly without falling over their own feet. Ravager dance parties are less coordinated, and tend to result in blaster misfires and at least one amputated toe.

“Go on,” he murmurs. His voice has sunk to that husky part of his chest. Kraglin starts and twists to blink at him when Yondu clears his throat. He has to swallow the shot to give him something else to focus on, besides the faint lines from where the spacemask pressed into Kraglin's cheeks, and the pupils eating the blue of his eyes. “Choose.”

Kraglin licks his lips. A toothy imprint dents the bottom one, from where he'd been gnashing it while they were having their Grown-up Discussion the night before last. Bruises dimple chapped skin. It looks like someone has already crammed their mouth against him; like he's already a little kiss-drunk, a little defiled. 

Yondu ought to ruffle his mohawk and complete the look. His hand pauses before it can bury to the knuckle in greasy hair.

He doesn't want them to see that. It's selfish, and stupid - but hell. Yondu's already established that he doesn't make friends easily. Is it so wrong to keep a fraction of Kraglin to himself, even if that fraction is the way he flushes and scowls after a noogie, mohawk spiked in all directions?

Yondu curls his fingers around the shot glass instead. Luckily, Kraglin hasn't noticed his inner quandary. His eyes skate the dancers, darting through the squirming knot as the men shift together, compressed within the zone where the music booms loudest. The majority are, as expected, green. But they're a variegated bunch, as is usual for unaffiliated smuggler ports. There's pink, white, brown... Even a rare glint of blue.

Yondu knows which Kraglin has his eye on.

Lad's younger than both of 'em. He wears a skimpy number that would make Yondu bulge in all the wrong places: tight red shorts, fishnets, and a crop top with a beaded fringe, which he tugs teasingly away from all who try to snatch it, reeling him in like a ship in a traction beam.

He's also, to Yondu's discomfort, bright electric blue. His goatee, while better trimmed than his own, nevertheless adds a rascally edge to his boyish appearance. He's a bit on the slim side, but otherwise the likeness is unmistakable.

Yondu needs another drink.

Kraglin's watching him again. His pointer finger wavers, about to slip to a guy of a more generic color palette – pale skinned and brunette, like he is. Yondu snaps his fingers. He downs the contents of the glass the bartender pushes in his direction without pausing to sniff it, and jumps to his feet before Kraglin can lose his nerve.

“Alright,” he says, clapping his hands and relishing the familiar lurch of a belly fed on spirits and fumes. “Les get'chu your man.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Feed me your comments; receive more fic!**


	7. (Almost) Everyone Gets Laid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MEEEEE**

Kraglin's man is got.

It ain't a challenge – guy came here looking for a good time. All Yondu has to do is convince him that Kraglin is where he'll find it.

Music booms within the ten square meters allotted as this club's dance floor. It's an earworm beat, repeated again and again, variations on a theme. Yondu knows he'll be hearing it in his dreams, as if the riff has been stamped on his greymatter. He has to bellow to be heard, but his gravelled rasp of a voice ain't clear enough to impart the message.

Back in the good ol' days, when he was still learning to shape his vocal cords around Xandarian, Martinex made a wisecrack about Yondu's lisp. Only once – the throat-punch dissuaded that line of mockery. It also skinned Yondu's knuckles, being as the guy was made of diamond, but it was worth it.

In the present, Kraglin's blue beau cups his ear. Yondu doesn't bother with a second attempt. He doesn't need to. Flame patches are like the lures of Beyonders in deepspace: luminescent beads which glimmer in the dark, enticing the ships that drift into the doldrums beyond Galaxy's Edge where nav equipment fails and no matter how far you expand your starcharts, you can't find a single constellation. All he has to do is step away from the throng, smirk curling one corner of his mouth. The blue kid follows him.

Pirate garb is like honey to gals who're after a bit on the wild side. Yondu ain't surprised that it seduces men as well. Hell, once they're away from the blasting music, his younger, slimmer, prettier doppelganger tries to hit on _him_.

Kraglin perches on the edge of his stool where Yondu left him. He's flushed from the follicles on his head to those which vanish below his neckline, and looks very much like he'd like to bolt. But when he spies Yondu prying the undulating body off him before the boy can crack that overused cliche ( _is that an arrow in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?_ ) he forces a smile.

It's charming, in a wobbly way.

Yondu only realizes he's frozen when the boy tugs his captive arms. “We going over there or not?” he grumbles. Yondu dons his own bright grin.

“Course we are. My buddy's dyin' to get to know ya. After you?”

 

* * *

 

Ten minutes later, Yondu tires of the innuendos being fired back and forth, accompanied by Kraglin's stammer and his seeming inability to decide whether he wants to focus on their guest or his cap'n. “Go on, already,” he says, thumbing at the door. “Git. Thassan order. And boy? Don't let my first mate come back until his balls've shrivelled.”

Kraglin falls over himself in his effort to be suave, while simultaneously sputtering at the command and deferring to his cap'n. The boy smirks at the pair of them, and - well. If Yondu's noticed their shared features, he'd wager that the same applies in return.

“Aren't you coming, Captain Udonta?”

Kraglin chokes. Yondu pounds his back until he coughs up the inhaled mouthful in a froth of boozey spit. He glares at the blue boy the whole while.

Killing him would defeat the purpose of getting Kraglin laid. Maybe later.

“Not my style,” he says instead. “You kids have fun. Now – scat.”

They trail away, Kraglin still hacking into his fist with his other hand clasped in blue. Yondu considers trailing them to make sure they find a decent hotel and don't get overcharged. But he decides that might blur the line between _protective_ and _creepy,_ and shunts that idea aside in favor of filling his thoughts with bot-hookers and finishing his final drink for the night.

...Or not. Another smacks the straps that pin his coat sleeve to the wrist of his shooting arm.

Yondu glances up, sucking spilled gin off his fingers. He looks the guy over, decides he probably couldn't take him in hand-to-hand, and purses his lips instead. His accoster immediately raises his palms – although he doesn't appear threatened. He's chuckling to himself, shaking his head like Yondu's done something amusing, rather than threatened to skewer him like a despicably well-built kebab.

“Can't a guy buy a guy a drink?”

The come-on ain't the reason Yondu's on the defensive. The man's blue too – the only other one in the place, besides Yondu, Kraglin's friend, and a shady lil' Half-breed manning the next bar along, who Yondu swears he's seen before but can't quite place. Yondu's admirer is a hue darker than he is. Black lines trace the arteries in his temple and under his jaw, and his eyes are the misty violet of a Kree.

There must be a Jötun lurking in a corner too, because the atmosphere turns rapidly frosty. Yondu bares his teeth. Then, in case that ain't enough of a threat display, flips his coat off his arrowhead too.

There. Now he doesn't have to pierce his leathers.

“Booze accepted, offer not. Fuck off.”

“Fiesty.” The Kree laughs, palms still raised. “Should've known. It _is_ Udonta, right? _The_ Udonta?”

Is he here to collect his bounty? Yondu's well-practised at hiding his tells. He doesn't glance at his holo-mugshot: a revolving three-dimensional study of his face. But the Kree shakes his head.

“Don't you worry, darling. I'll go if you really want me too.”

Talking to him in that tone is grounds for murder. Yondu'd make good on it, and enjoy it too, except that he ain't on home turf. If he leaves the bar staff with a corpse to dispose of, there's a chance his name will be blacklisted.

Of course, Yondu don't give two shits. Ain't like he's here to sate his needs. But there's another chance, slighter yet no less significant, that Kraglin will be blacklisted alongside him, guilty by association.

Best he handle this peaceably.

“I really want ya to.”

Kree guy shrugs. He doesn't make good on his promise. When Yondu's snarl becomes audible – a dangerous rattle in his throat that has the men on the nearest sofa relocating – he scoots his stool back by an inch, but no further. “I was merely wondering what a cute piece of blue was doing in a place like this. There are so few of our color this side of the Skrull border.”

He raises a good point. Yondu capitalizes on it. “You first. Why's a Kree so far from the homeworld? Y'all bounty-huntin' or what?”

“Oh.” The man's brawny arms are lax, but they fill out his sleeves nevertheless. Yondu is, not for the first time, grateful for the added bulk of his shoulder plates. “This and that. Nothing Hala needs to know about, if you get my drift.”

He taps the side of his nose. That still makes Yondu's spine snap tight, skimming him for hidden weaponry. He finds none. Only a set of abs that could be used for a grips on a climbing wall, and (wow, those pants ought to be included in the dictionary definition of _skintight_ ) a dick that must've lost bloodflow, given how it's vacuum-packed to his leg.

So, he's scum like Yondu. A renegade. If he ain't affiliated with the noble families, he's not gonna care too much about vengeance - Yondu's adrenaline rush is in reaction to his race, not his threat level. Yondu doesn't rearrange his duster flaps, but he doesn't whistle either.

“Take yer drink and give it to someone prettier,” he orders eventually, after they've exchanged glares and smirks long enough for the man's brazenness to cede to sweat. “Be glad this didn't end worse.”

He's paid his tab and is out the door by the time he realizes he forgot to inform the guy he ain't into dudes. Idiot must be formulating his assumptions. By all rights Yondu ought to storm back in there and set the record straight – a phrase with more than one figurative meaning – before rumors start spewing out this planet-station's afterburners.

But hey. He has a date with five bot-hookers.

All in all, he's classing today as a success. That morning he bumped hips with Kraglin on the Bridge. Rather than looking constipated, Kraglin seemed delighted, in a quiet sort of way. They'd shared space and conversation just as companionably as they had back in the days when Yondu assumed that when Kraglin vanished planetside, he was checking oil prices and bartering over trinkets, and other such menial tasks expected of a first mate, rather than sloping to gaybars on the sly. He's found the idiot a dick to ride – or an ass to fuck, most likely, remembering the blue brat's overabundance of eyeshadow and his and Kraglin's earlier conversation. He's even managing not to imagine what they look like as they slide together: white and hairy on blue and sleek.

What does one Kree matter, compared to that? He can't ruin Yondu's good mood if Yondu doesn't let him.

He exits the airlock, mask on. Night falls quickly on this station. Spores flurry around him like a slowed-down blizzard, illuminated by the lurid pink halo of the barsign. Yondu walks until he finds his bearings. Then he turns on his heels, using his nose as a compass until he locates the nearest brothel. His mask filters the air of toxins and plant matter, not scent; sex and bot-maintenance grease blur into a sleazy fug, a smell as familiar as that of the piping caffeinated drinks he and Kraglin share when they're overseeing the skeleton-shift.

Yondu leaves Kraglin a message – _use protection, love boss._ Then he turns off all but his emergency commlinks, selects a quintet of buxom redheads from the bot-hooker stock catalog, and starts on the self-congratulation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Hands up who trusts this new Kree guy**


	8. Washing up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Just a quickie because I'm pooped. But enjoy this insight into Yondu's psyche. And uh. Shower scene.**

He runs into Kraglin the next morning.

Payment for their latest contract has been finalized, and the units have siphoned into their faction's virtual safe. They're going to make a circuit, out to Stakar's territory for reasons Yondu would rather not think about while his brain is pickled, then back towards the narrow strip that's been claimed by the 99th: a skidmark of space between Skrull systems and the constellations that fly the Nova flag.

Yondu prefers to take hard cash where he can find it. Call him old-fashioned, but he doesn't like the idea that some whizzkid with a palm-held data device can press a few buttons and drain what's owned by him and his: numbers on a screen ticking down to zero. Nope - at the end of the astral year, you can't beat a big shiny treasure horde. It's the pirate way.

However, times have changed. The contents of the _Eclector's_ on-board vaults have been steadily liquidated over the years. Coin by coin, jewel by jewel, ridiculously ornate Thanos statue by... You get the picture. Yondu's crew ain't seen solid gold in so long that having a stash of it aboard might prove too much temptation. Best Yondu control finances through an offplanet account (tax-free, of course; he ain't no sucker) and dribble extra funds to his men only when they perform well enough to merit a bonus.

But when Yondu says 'he runs into Kraglin' he means 'he forgets to press his ear to the frame before yanking open the shower-room door, and gets an eyeful'.

It's difficult to contemplate the finnicky ins and outs of the Ravager's invoice system when there's a wiry body being sluiced down, not six feet away.

Yondu scrubs his crusty eyelashes. He ain't hungover, because he's a tough guy and tough guys can stay up all night on a stomach full of booze, enjoying the soft, artificially eager mouths of bot-hookers until the solars crank on, and the spores blanket the ground in deadly fluff.

Or rather, _young_ tough guys can. If Quill's sixteen and Kraglin's ten years older, Yondu's ten years beyond that. He feels like he left his brain, his liver, and a good chunk of his digestive system back at the brothel. Possibly some of his soul too, if there's still a shred of that lurking in his chest. That evacuated when the tallest of the quintet, designation  _Chastity_ , did that thing with her tongue that proves bot manufacturers have a sense of humor.

Ugh. Well, he's young and spry enough to get interest at a bar. That bar might have been a gaybar, and that interest might have come from a Kree Yondu'd rather see strung up with hooks through the ankles rather than naked. But hey. Yondu'll take compliments where he can get 'em.

He should probably be more hesitant about sharing space and a water supply with his mate. He's trying _not_ to lead him on, after all. But so sue him, Yondu's reaction time is lagging under the weight of his most-definitely-not-a-hangover. By the time his motor control remembers how to close his door and back away, Kraglin's already spotted him.

“Mornin' sir,” he says cheerfully, ducking out from under the spray. “Ya look like shit.”

The same could be said for Kraglin, although the vibes he's broadcasting are less ‘I slept in the gutter’ and more 'I got laid to within an inch of my life'. There are hickeys on his neck. Large wet bruises, made for the joy of leaving a mark, puffy and sore-looking. They're a glossy aubergine, the color of a black eye.

Yondu finds himself wondering what the matching set he must've looked like. Spit shining on bright blue skin; the ringed imprint of Kraglin's fangs...

He doesn't let his bloodshot eyes complete their downwards trek. He stomps forwards, flipping his middle finger at Kraglin – a gesture learned from Quill, which is far more eloquent than words. That's good, because Yondu ain't capable of them. He garbles something unintelligble even to his own ears, takes his place at the far end of the overhead shower-strip, and bonks his forehead glumly off the wall.

The tiles are cool, in comparison to the water. Yondu inhales until his nostrils clot with steam.

By the time he's let the stiffness and the sweat and the silicone-based bot-hooker lubricant flush away, Kraglin's rumpling his hair dry in front of the chipped old mirror, which hasn't seen a polish since the pair of them got promoted. He hisses as he probes his lovebites, trailing fingertips over the purple-blotted tattoos.

Yondu watches his reflection, because moving his eyes takes energy he doesn't have. His gaze only latches onto his joggling meat by coincidence. He can't help it; the damn thing waggles like a dog's tail as Kraglin towels off. It's almost comical while flaccid. Like a cut-off hosepipe, or an uncooked galley sausage.

Yondu only looks out of scientific fascination. He's curious, that’s all. Trying to discern what guys like Kraglin see in that thing: the long slim pecker that Kraglin keeps rolled back on itself, tucked behind dual walls of groincup and jumpsuit. It's a different model to his own. Significantly more tentacular, for one thing. Yondu half-expects it to wrap around Kraglin's leg.

He'd need to subject it to more rigorous study to learn its exact specifications. He's so engrossed with his clinical analysis that he doesn't notice Kraglin's attention shift, from his steam-streaked reflection to Yondu's.

“Uh. Sir?”

Yondu jumps. He grabs the shower knob before he can slip on his ass and make this even more embarrassing. “Huh?”

“Yer kinda... starin'.”

Yondu's brain ain't in optimal bullshit-spouting mode, but he cajoles it into rustling up an excuse. “Ya just got in the way of where I was lookin',” he says. He cranks the shower dial around, increasing the force of the jet until the pummel between his shoulderblades aches, and he has to shout to be heard over the roar: “Middle distance, is all!”

Kraglin sighs. “Sorry, sir.”

“No problem. I forgive ya. Uh. So. Last night. Good time, yeah?” If he keeps the interrogation abrupt, it might sound like he doesn't give a shit. That's the theory.

Kraglin nods. The memory of his mattress-bouncing exploits distracts from any awkwardness between them; lad looks near-buoyant. Starry-eyed and smiling and – curse it all to hell – mighty cute. But only in the way Quill is, or those bobble-heads Yondu lines along his M-ship dashboard, so he can watch them nod in obsequious agreement whenever he slams on the brakes.

“Well?” he prompts, cupping handfuls of water and splashing his face until the gritty feel is replaced by the sharper sting of soap. “You gonna see him again?”

“He gave me his comm signature.” That dreamy expression has yet to fade. “Says he works at one of the local eateries, so maybe if we swing by this station again?”

Yondu makes a mental note to re-organize stocking schedules, so that they have an excuse to stop off next time they have business. Post-coital bliss looks good on Kraglin.

He dismisses him with a nod and a grunt, turning back to his wall. The tiles are shiny enough that he can watch Kraglin pause. His head - a fuzzy, silhouetted lump - bobs through an ogle, before he stops himself with a self-directed scowl.

Fuck knows what part of Yondu is a catalyst for that lust. Yondu ain't shy and he ain't prude - he couldn't tell you definition of shame, let alone list synonyms. But while their mirror ain't the squeakiest reflective surface around, he _has_ looked in it lately. There's no accounting for taste, yada-yada. However, he's been thinking on the subject of Kraglin's confession, in the same way he probes a rotting tooth for a minimum of a month before caving and storming to Mijo with gold for a replacement and a pair of pliers. He still can't work out _why_ Kraglin latched onto him as jerk-off material.

He's no looker. Especially not his back, with its overlay of whip stripes and brands and vertebrae poking through the skin: the remnants of crest struts hacksawed off by hands a little larger than his own. Kraglin's pretty much the only man on crew who's seen it. But he still stares like he wants to follow the passage of his eyes with his tongue, rather than wrap Yondu in a full-body paper bag with conveniently-placed holes.

It won't last. Of that, Yondu's sure. If Kraglin maintains this trajectory, finding himself a pretty pair of blue legs to thrust between whenever they make port, it won't be long before he relearns the allure of untortured skin, and remembers what it's like to screw someone who's capable of saying 'I love you', even if it's a passion-fueled lie. Then things will go back to normal. Or at least, the normal of the pre-confession days, when Yondu was immune to the tickle of Kraglin's stare on his skin.

Yondu tells himself he's looking forwards to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **All comments = undying adoration! And thank you so much for all the birthday wishes yesterday!**


	9. A Captain's Coat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CN: Yondu casually misgendering people**

Yondu stares at the spreadsheet that will reroute them past the spore-planet in a fortnight. He stares at it for a very long time. Then he wipes it, inputs new coordinates, saves and dismisses, ignoring the prickle in his chest and the whisper of _you're being selfish._

For some reason, that internal voice sounds a lot like Quill's.

Yondu considers wasting half an hour on introspection: working out the whys and the wherefores of his decision. He comms the navs instead.

“Get us outta this system,” he says, tossing the nearest trinket between his hands. It's a black cat figurine, one Kraglin bought him – actually _bought,_ not stole. Its twee sculpted smile kisses his fingertips, his palm, the ball of his thumb, and dammit but he should've seen the signs years ago. “Don't wanna so much as see it flag on our consoles by the time I reach deck.”

He cuts off their protest that that's impossible, given their current fuel percentiles and engine outputs, and trudges to his wardrobe to select his coat for the day.

He has a decent stockpile by now. The Ravagers have an on-ship tailor – name's Jerric; and while Yondu calls him 'he' out of habit, he knows he's technically from a species that gives few shits about binary genders and fewer about associated roles. All spacefarers cultivate basic sewing skills, out of necessity – better to suffer threading the occasional needle than walk around with a rip over the seat of your pants after Quill puts thumbtacks on your chair.

Yondu may or may not have learned that one the hard way.

But it's the tailor who handles the complex stuff: creating fitted couture out of the scraps which are snipped from Ravager cadavers and piled in the recycling bucket outside his door. He's a quiet sort of fella – prefers to be left to himself, unless he's taking measurements. However, he's also thoughtful, in a way few of Yondu's band can boast. When his cap'n came stomping back from the Courts with his patch dangling from his sleeve, he'd darned it to his chest instead, leaving the customary place on his right bicep bare.

Yondu'd been pissed at first, seeing it as another slight, another reminder of everything he'd lost. But over the years, he's come to appreciate the flame over his heart, the one that marks him as Outcast and Oathbreaker. It's even stitched a little crooked, just like him.

After he totalled his first leathers and had to shiver round the ship in two meager layers until Jerric gathered enough material to hash together his next, he asked that he cobble up some spares. Jerric obliged him. He also stitched the patch in the exact same place at the exact same angle on each, without needing to be asked.

It's loyalty like that which makes the knowledge of what awaits him after death – a lightless, starless dark – that bit more bearable. Jerric, Kraglin, Tullk, Oblo, Isla, Mijo and Quill. (Sometimes Gef too. When he's not trying to impress Taserface, the simpleton's simply too gullible not to like, and Yondu wreaks endless amusement by sending him to the supply cupboards in search of elbow grease, gyropractic defenestrators, and tartan paint.) They're the only ones he trusts on this stars-damned ship. And even then, he wouldn't hesitate to butcher them if they crossed him – or at least, he plays the part well enough that they believe it.

Some days, he wishes he never answered Ego's call. Then he remembers that would mean he'd never have an excuse to abduct a little Terran from a hospital lawn in the dead of night, and decides that perhaps it was worth it.

On other days, he weighs what he's gained against what he's lost and finds that it falls fathoms short.

But the past is as fixed as Stakar's shun-decree, and Yondu is equally as powerless to change it. Best he make do with what he's got, and thank the stars for all those lil' things other folks take for granted: clothes, food, the lack of a collar around his neck.

Yondu surveys his dusters. They swing in single file along a rail that's older than he is, and rustier too. He heaves out the heaviest – a bulky thing, thick with armored plating and dry blood. It'll weigh him down, make him slow and clumsy. But Yondu ain't gonna need to sprint. Today is all about show. He's got to be bigger than he is, tougher than he is, _badder_ than he is - because today, he confronts his Admiral.

The fight has languished in the brewing stage since Yondu stormed back through the _Eclector_ airlock, and announced that from now on, the only code his crew need follow was his own. In the early days, when he, Stakar, Aleta, Marinex, Charlie and Mainframe had called themselves _family,_ each captain had been assigned their own hunting grounds. Yondu's spanned the Azavith Quadrangle and associated outflung systems. It's a sketchy, elongated dodecahedron between Skrull and Xandar territories, which stretches from the Galactic Core out towards Knowhere and the barren terraformations that hang around the Outer Rim like dead flies in a web.

It ain't the most populous trade route, or the one that rakes in most dough. That's why Stakar gave it to Yondu, who's capable of squeezing profit from dry stones if left to his own devices. After Yondu left – or was ignominiously booted out – Stakar decided that the effort of wrestling it off him surpassed its potential yields.

But now, thanks to a stockade, a tense stretch of No-Man's Space, and the ongoing Kree-Xandarian conflict, a major cruise passage has been diverted right across Yondu's prime feeding spot. Excellent news for him – systems once-derelict are teeming with new wealth, more than enough to make hunting a more lucrative business than whatever feeble trade they can snaffle out from under Stakar's nose.

Only problem? Stakar's just as much of a greedy bugger as Yondu, if not more so. He wants in. And where he goes, Yondu's profits take a graceful swandive.

Yondu ain't giving up without a fight. Stakar's got the artillery and the manpower, but he has the guerrilla tactics, and enough familiarity with his home terrain to make them effective. His nav-systems log the last-known layouts of the asteroid belts, and the eruption schedules of each neutron star. More importantly still, he boasts enough sheer wiliness to make theirs a skirmish that will end poorly for both. Mutually assured destruction.

And so, they stand at impasse.

There's only one way to solve this. Yondu's gotta march onto that salty sod's ship, and tell him to his face to quit muscling in on his spot. Then he's gonna fill an IV bag with moonshine, buy a bot-hooker, and find a dark room to sit in for a very long time.

Things almost go according to plan - until Kraglin does a very un-Kraglin-like thing. He puts his foot down. On Yondu's, in fact, in an effort to stop him marching to the airlock and ignoring him.

“I _said,_ I'm coming with you.”

Yondu wriggles his boot back and forth. When Kraglin grimly bores in his heel, he changes tactics – grabbing the lanky dolt under both armpits, hoisting him up, and plopping him down a pace away. “And I said like hell ya are.”

Pink tints Kraglin's cheeks. Something tells Yondu it's only partially from anger. He gets over himself though, storming to ball his fist in Yondu's collar – and he's lucky they're alone (or alone with Quill's exception, who doesn't count) because otherwise Yondu would've put an arrow through him there and then for touching him without permission.

Or, y'know. He'd have threatened.

“Boss, c'mon. This is madness.”

“This is how I get the a-hole to back off,” Yondu corrects. “He's so sick of my mug he doesn't wanna wet his cock at the same whorehouses what serve me? I say we use that against him.”

“And _I say_ he'll take this opportunity to _kill you!_ Runnin' into him by chance on a casino planet's one thing, boss. This is somethin' else entirely. Yer trespassin' on his ship, enterin' his territory -”

“Like he entered mine, every time he's snatched a prize out from under us? Hell no! We ain't takin' this lying down.”

He shakes off Kraglin's hand and stamps for the exit once more. Kraglin scuttles after him. “ _We,_ not _you!_ Ya need back-up, at least!”

“I work better alone. Ya stay with the brat; keep him outta mischief.”

“I'm sixteen,” the brat gripes. “I don't need a babysitter. And anyway, Kraglin's right.”

Yondu thins his eyes. “He is?”

Kraglin's, in contrast, widen. “I am?”

“Yeah!” Quill firms his chin, speckly with stubble and acne. “We ain't letting you walk into this alone, cap'n.” A pause. “Although I'm coming mostly to get a look at that Stark-dude's face. He looks freakishly like Rambo.”

Ugh. Yondu _hates_ it when they gang up on him. "Yer still grounded," he reminds him. Quill scowls.

"But you let me off-ship on Dizerall!"

"Really? Ya musta been imaginin' things, boy, cause _yer still grounded._ " Then, because explaining Terran references makes for an excellent distraction: "Anyway, whassa Rambo?"

Quill, true to form, launches into a tale of arrows and helicopters and improbable feats of strength, and while Kraglin's listening, expression more boggled by the second, Yondu sidles for the airlock.

He doesn't make it. Kraglin snaps around when he hears the hiss of unsealing rubber and hastens after him, as good as plastering himself to Yondu's back. “Sir! Don'tchu fuckin' dare -”

Yondu activates his spacemask. Then, as an afterthought, presses Kraglin's too. He slams the lock button before Quill can pile in after them – it's cramped with two, and three's a crowd. He gives the brat a cheery wave as they blast out into the black.

Kraglin wants to come watch the showdown? He's welcome to. Yondu always performs better with an audience.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Comments make the writer stronger!**


	10. Interrogations and Intimacies

Unfortunately, no ass-handing occurs, because Stakar has abandoned ship.

Yondu discovers this while his arrow bores a hole through the bo'sun's wrist. They accost him in a bog block cubicle. Yondu drops from the ceiling grate while he unzips, the shattered extractor fan pattering like steel hail around their boots, while Kraglin sneaks in the conventional way, clad in a purloined uniform. He hangs the out-of-order notice on the door before cramming in besides.

It's poky, to say the least. There's barely space to breathe, let alone play threat-charades, and if he starts bellowing there's no way the dude straining out a shit three cubbies down won't notice.

That's okay. Yondu can improvise.

Kraglin holds their captive steady, wire-thin arm locked over his throat. Yondu refuses to contemplate why the sight of his mate, braced against the door with his elbow joint forming the loop of the noose, makes heat spill into his lower abdomen. It ain't even the sort of heat that can be blamed on a hitherto-unnoticed plasma bolt. Yondu decides it's in his best interests to concentrate on the bo'sun instead.

He ain't never had the pleasure of making his acquaintance. The man must've joined up (or been pressganged off a merchant ship, or stolen from Kree slave ranks; same difference) after Yondu's expulsion. He's Xandarian – of the pink-skinned variety. His purple eyes are pretty as amethyst-stones.

Yondu's already threatened to pluck 'em out and mount 'em on earrings, but it ain't had the desired effect. Course not. If there's one thing Stakar never tolerates, it's cowardice. And oathbreakers – although that goes without saying.

All this entails is that for the remaining half hour before the man's shift-partners decide their senior officer is either severely constipated, captured, or has somehow managed to wedge himself around the U-bend, Yondu gets to have himself a little fun.

At long, very long last, the bunged-up crewman finishes his business. This is announced by a wet plop, as well as a smell - a gastric stench that could be bottled up and used for biological warfare. It latches onto the gag reflex. The man's relieved sigh drowns Kraglin's chokes, and the flusher plunge gives him time to wrestle himself under control, while Yondu glares and the bo'sun seethes, and their fourth wheel saunters out of his cubicle and treats his hands to a leisurely lather, rinse, and cuticle-file before heading back to his post.

“I'll ask again,” Yondu says, as the door eases shut behind him. “Where's Ogord? Me and the geezer got business to discuss.”

The bo'sun would spit at his feet, if Kraglin's chokehold let his head move more than an inch. “Business?” he hisses. His fist is so clenched that his tendons quiver a fraction from slicing themselves on the arrowhead. “As if my cap'n would ever conduct _business_ with scum like you!”

Kraglin's does a decent impression of an oncoming thunderstorm, for someone so hairy and pallid. “Don'tchu talk to my cap'n like that,” he hisses.

His wrist pins the bo'sun's jugular. He maintains the pressure until the man's eyes roll back. Then Kraglin releases, letting blood flood his head in a dizzying gush. With it returns the pain, and the man _yowls_ as Yondu whistles, gentle and soft, twisting the arrow a slick centimeter further, burrowing under his skin.

Ain't no sound sweeter. Except, perhaps, the coordinates that burble from his trembling lips.

 _Familiar_ coordinates. The Iron Lotus; Yondu should've known. He and Stakar share an uncomfortable amount of traits, their vices being the tip of the asteroid.

Yondu should be more concerned about how he's emulated the man. Slavery didn't encourage cultivation of unique personalities; post-collar, it was only natural that Yondu modelled himself after the pirate who saved him.

How much of Yondu is Yondu, and how much a shoddy copy? Those thoughts can only lead to an identity crisis, and _that_ can only lead to longer spent in that darkened room with the bot-hooker and the moonshine IV-bag than his position as captain affords him.

His crew need a boss. They don't need a bitch. They certainly don't need an ex-Kree slave. Luckily Yondu's a showman. He plays the part so well that even he's convinced by it.

He's convinced when he wakes up in the morning and he's convinced when he collapses into his bunk at night. He's convinced when he parks his ass on his throne, grinning at the Nova ships that gun desperately away from the _Eclector's_  hull, and as he bellows _open fire_ and _no survivors._

He's equally as convinced during the escape from Stakar's ship – a convoluted plan that involves Kraglin, the less recognizable of the pair, acting as eyes and ears, while Yondu crams himself through the ventilation ducts and swears at him over the comm. He remains convinced as they approach the _Warbird,_ Kraglin's jet-boots snipping bright wedges out of Yondu's vision _._ Their M-ship is cloaked with state-of-the-art stolen Shi'ar technology. She hovers near the silent furnace of Stakar's thrusters. They're powered by the massive solar sails above, wreathing his galleon in coruscant ribbons.

Shiny _and_ practical. Yondu's favorite combination.

If he thought he could get away with it, he'd steal her in a heartbeat. But retaliation would be swift and decisive. Anyway, it's not the _Firelord_ Yondu's after. He's here to face down the Admiral himself.

An average bladder would empty at the thought. But Yondu ain't allowed to be afraid. Should he let doubt corrupt him, his men will seize that weakness and wring it until it squelches. No fear, no concern, and certainly no sentiment. Which is why, after they reach the Iron Lotus and find themselves in a shoal of blue-coats, when he straddles Kraglin and hisses 'kiss me, dammit' against his stubble, he's thinking of nothing but the job.

The job, plus their continued existence, and a means of diverting Martinex's attention, who's keeping watch on the brothel floor while his captain cavorts with this institute's finest and sturdiest.That's all that crosses Yondu's mind. He barely notices the shocked part of Kraglin's lips, or the way his fingers scrabble at Yondu's belt when he loses patience and crushes their mouths together without permission, keeping him hooked and close.

Their liplock lasts several fraught seconds – seconds in which Kraglin can be mistaken for one of Stakar's band, and Yondu at a glance (a very, very fast glance, which doesn't take into account the red overcoat he's bundled off, or the neckscarf yanked up to hide his implant) for the rentboy on his lap.

But that's all Yondu needs to lick up Kraglin's taste. Smoke from the huffer cigarettes Yondu steals off him and jettisons from the airlock whenever he finds 'em, cause doesn't the idiot know those are bad for you in the long run? Their lunch – semi-rancid scraps from the bottom of the galley vats. Sour spit, metal, and the rotting tooth that he's gonna want pulled before the month's out...

Yondu presses his tongue against it. Tastes the puffy flesh around the root, and feels Kraglin jerk under him. He absolutely _does not_ moan, not even when Kraglin's hands transition from tugging at his belt to cupping trembling handfuls of buttock, squeezing them together and pulling them apart until the leather around the zipper _strains..._

Yondu catches a flash of crystalline skin out the corner of his eye. Martinex vanishes into the whorehouse's crowded casino area, where Ravagers alternate betting on skink-rings and slot machines with punching each other and falling over themselves in drunk-and-disorderly disarray.

A weird part of him is tempted to ignore Marty's exodus and stay right where he is. Stars know why – ain't like Kraglin's the comfiest seat. His thighs are skinnier than the blades stashed up his sleeves. Yondu might as well have borrowed a Kymellian fakir's nailbed. But the hands on his ass, groping, kneading, _yearning;_ and the thrust of hips under him, too slight to buck his weight _...._

Oh yeah. He doesn't like this. At. All.

He retrieves his tongue from where Kraglin'd been making a passing attempt at removing it through suction. He definitely doesn't consider how good that'd feel on other parts of him. He scoots until he's perched on Kraglin's knees, legs bracketing his skinny waist and boots scuffing at the join between the sofa's velvet back and its equally plush seat. He wipes Kraglin-tasting saliva from his jaw.

“Think he's gone,” he says, and clambers off to complete their mission.

Kraglin stays on the sofa. Processing, most likely. Yondu prays he ain't overtaxed what few braincells the idiot has, because suitable first mate candidates are a bugger to find. Besides Tullk, who's too smart to want the responsibility, the only guy who comes close is Quill. He's several decades too immature for command - not that Yondu would admit considering the brat in the first place.

However, by the time Yondu's stalked to the occupied suite, lips moistened in preparation to whistle (he's uncomfortably aware that the moistness is a concoction of his and Kraglin's saliva, but he ain't gonna let that stop him), his man is back besides him. Kraglin glances at him sideways, like he suspects the arrow's for him and not the Admiral. Yondu doesn't meet his eyes.

“Don't make it weird,” he warns, glaring straight ahead and praying the tingle in his mouth will vanish if he ignores it long enough. “S'just a distraction.”

Kraglin casts his shadow over the little joss stick, mounted on the wall in an effort to dispel the sex-stink that saturates the brothel from carpets to musty drapes. At Yondu's words, he inclines his head.

“Aye sir,” he says.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This chapter's certainly a whirlwind! Comments are a writer's best friend!**


	11. Struck Deals

The Ogord clan ain't expecting trouble. As soon as they've navigated the brothel's lounge (a minefield of old allies, brothers-in-arms, and ornamental stools lurking at shin height) the throng dissipates. Stakar's room is unguarded. Evidently, the Admiral's ability to fend for himself has been proven enough times that he's trusted without an escort - perhaps Kraglin could learn a thing or two.

Yondu unwinds his scarf from where it's tied bandana-style around his skull. Kraglin, who carries his cap'n's duster inside out so that the purple inner lining is on display, hands it over.

They both flinch when their fingers brush, but neither of them mention it.

“Ready?” Yondu breathes. He drags his sleeves up his arms and, once the coat has settled, slaps his localised EMP against the doorframe. Magnets clamp in a hexagon, locking it in place.

Kraglin nods. The sharp contraction and release of neck muscles leaves his head bobbing like he's one of the spring-mounted toys on Yondu's dashboard. His hands are still curled around the shape of the coat – or perhaps a phantom man, who closes the distance between them while Yondu pulls away. But he ain't scarpered to lick his wounds – or his lips, which must be tingling just as much as Yondu's. That's all that matters.

“Ready,” Yondu answers for him. As soon as the EMP puffs, shorting all circuits within a five inch range, he storms forwards and yanks open the door.

 

* * *

 

The confrontation can be summarized in three stages, all of which happen simultaneously. These are, in no particular order:

  1. Kraglin brandishes his pistol

  2. Yondu whistles



  1. Stakar's eyes glow brilliant white, and he raises his palms, solar wings charging until they vibrate with latent energy.




Beams split the dim-lit room. They illuminate the upholstery in slices: a chink of metal from the repowering plinth in the corner; a gash of leather from the crisply-folded coat on the back of the bedside chair.

 _Of course he keeps 'em active while he fucks,_ Yondu thinks, with an internal eye-roll. A hypocritical one, seeing as his arrow never leaves his side, not even for the duration of a mattress-testing session. But at the very least, his weapon is nondescript while depowered. Stakar's solar-wing mounts: all eight inches of shaped gold and flaring power coils? No chance.

“Uh, I’ll wait over here.”

Kraglin ducks behind him. Wise decision, for a man whose only weapons are his guns and his wits. Yondu and Stakar hold their standoff-slash-staring contest, while the bot-hooker's AI struggles to process the interruption. She raises her face, upon which is captured a perfectly chiselled mimicry of lust, and invites the intruders to join them.

Yondu flashes his golden canine. Snapping heels together and spine straight, he thumps his chest twice in salute. Never hurts to pay respect. Especially since beneath the bravado, a part of him squirms like a schoolchild on the naughty step: sulky and snappish but desperate to make amends.

He wants Stakar's forgiveness. He hates that he wants it, but wants nevertheless.

“Y'all done here, old friend?”

Stakar, to his credit, takes being caught with his pants down - or at the very least, unfastened - with remarkable grace. He zips up and swaggers off the bed without a care for the arrow hovering an inch from his neck.

Yondu keeps it steady, tracing the tick of the vein. He doesn't try to prevent him crossing to the chair, just as Stakar doesn't pay the arrow any heed as he reaches for his shirt.

Integrated into the bones of his shoulders, his solar wings fizzle onto a less-tangible plane. They'll remain that way for the duration of his redressing, ready to dissolve back into existence when he dons his captain's coat. That's a titbit Yondu remembers from the days when Stakar was still having to coax him into the showerblock once a month, luring him in with sticky treats and stripping off besides him, keeping his big body between Yondu and the mirrors.

Right now, that patience is nowhere to be found. Stakar sneers at him from over the long hook of his nose. “We're not friends, Udonta. Haven't been in a very long time.”

Yondu feigns hurt. Or at least, feigns that he feigns it. “Last names. Harsh.”

“I told you to never let me lay eyes on you and yours again, or...” Stakar tugs the shirt over his face, peering above and below so his vision is never compromised. As if he thinks so little of Yondu. As if he might whistle while Stakar's guard is down.

Yondu admits to being tempted, when Stakar’s attention latches onto his mate.

It's hard to tell. The glow blots the pupil, making his eyes blank as a blind man's. However, there's no mistaking the direction of that gaze: beams pin Kraglin like dual-wielded spotlights. “Or,” murmurs Stakar, rolling his shirt over his hairy belly, “I'm not responsible for the outcome.”

Yondu's smirk falls off his face. Hustling Kraglin into his shadow, he takes a single, brazen step – directly into the light.

His body is the wall on which the brilliance breaks. The grease on his duster shimmers, iridescent as an oilslick. Heat, concentrated like sunlight through a magnifying glass, cooks him in his leathers, hotter than a midsummer pitstop on Dizerall.

But it's worth it. Kraglin is adapted for the tunnels and chutes of the Hraxian subturranea. Even with both arms upflung and eyes squeezed shut, Stakar's luminous display leaves him grimacing.

“And this,” Yondu singsongs under his breath, “is why I didn't wantcha to come.”

“Disobedience in the ranks?” Stakar can’t resist the jibe, as he fastens the buckles on his jacket. That's another trait they share, him and Yondu – only it's so much more _annoying_ when he does it. “Your crew're hunted by the Corps. The Kree plan on upping your bounty any day. And yet you walk into this place, to surround yourself with more enemies? Tell me, Udonta. Why have you broken the terms of your banishment?”

Yondu bristles. “Terms? There ain't no _terms_! Ya kicked me out the damn door and told me I were no longer under yer command – so why don'tchu tell _me,_ Stakar? Tell me why in stars-damned _hell_ do I gotta abide by yer _terms?_ ”

That's anger talking. What was it Stakar taught him? As soon as he loses control of himself, he loses. Period.

There's a beautiful irony here. Somewhere high above, a divinity is chuckling over their chess pieces, because Stakar’s own tutelage gives Yondu the strength to struggle through this conversation without drowning beneath thoughts of the past.

That would be bad. Thinking of his first mate would be worse. The catch of chapped lips. Silver teeth chiming while Martinex completed his circuit of the lobby and Kraglin pushed _up_ to meet each untrained roll of Yondu's pelvis, as he moved to a musicless rhythm, pulsing from his core in waves as instinctual as Kraglin's spit was sour...

Yondu clenches his jaw. If he wants Ogord’s respect... No, not _respect;_ he lost that decades ago. If he wants his ex-captain to envisage him as a threat rather than a puling child, he's gotta keep his cool. 

“You,” he starts again, in the menacing voice he reserves for doublecrossers and misbehaving Terrans, “are in my huntin' grounds, _Admiral._ So either y'all back off and take yer men with ya, or we finish this here.”

Stakar observes him as coolly as a man with starfire streaking from his optic nerves can. The bot twines sinuous arms around his waist. He waves her away without breaking eye contact - which is a shame for Yondu's corneas. She retreats to her charging port, plugs herself in, and depowers with a demure little smile.

As soon as she sags, Stakar stalks to the bed, gesturing Yondu and Kraglin closer. “So let's talk costing. For me to nullify my stake in this territory -”

“ _Your_ stake?”

“The stake _I gave you,_ which I can just as easily rescind. Allowing you full control will gut my profits, and I will be hard-pressed to make up for that revenue until the Corps redivert their cruise ships back through No-Man's Land.”

Kraglin raises his hand. “No-Man's _Space,_ technically.” When they turn to him, one amused and the other exasperated, he hunches like he wants to sink into his jacket collar and wither until there's nothing left but dirty leather and boots. “Nothin'. Carry on, sir - sirs.”

“Very well." Stakar sits, steepling his fingers. The star wanes from his eyes in increments. “To business, then.”

 

* * *

 

He and Stakar conduct negotiations _in situ_. It seems fitting – Yondu ain't worth a trek to the table. Not to Stakar, not anymore. This: the grime, the dust, the seedy faux-grandeur? This is where he belongs.

Unfortunately, while Mr Noble Lineage ain't of Yondu's scum stock, Stakar is very far from the naïve senator's son his dumbest enemies mistake him for. The man's a social chameleon. He might not be native to this shithole, but he puts on a good act. He matches Yondu's casual posture and his smirk as he makes offer after offer, each an improvement on the last but none which Yondu wants to hear.

Despite earlier claims to the contrary, Yondu is grateful for Kraglin's presence. He ain't no haggler. Soon as someone denies him a toy, he whips out the arrow – because why bother faffing, when you can secure your next dashboard trinket with a whistle?

Kraglin tends to that side of the business. Whether he's worming extra dimes out of contracted killings, or knocking down the price on shinies at a market stall (or simply distracting the owner, so that Yondu can fill his pockets in peace) he's always, _always_ an asset.

He certainly proves his worth now. Without him, they'd face a far heftier fee. Of course, that means little - not when no toll ought to have been levied in the first place.

“So what,” Yondu drawls, rubbing his arrow fletching between finger and thumb. “Ya want me to pay yer stupid stipend?”

“Correct. Same as any other captain under my banner.”

“Only unlike dem other cap'ns, I get no army at my back next time I'm in shit?” Yondu's nail scratches the thrumming yaka-bead. “That ain't fair.”

Stakar snorts. “You forfeited the right to _fair_ when you trafficked children.”

There he goes again. Slapping his trump card on the table. And _sure_ _,_ he's justified. The sharp inhale from Kraglin contains more outrage than Yondu can manage, because he still lays awake at night and recites the names of each poor kid he entertained, fed, clothed, and delivered to their deaths. But that doesn't mean he wants to be reminded of his biggest mistake.

“This negotiation's over,” he snarls. Grit from his boot treads crunches into the carpet as he stomps to the door. He ushers Kraglin ahead of him, because the idjit's dumb enough to wait until he's gone before giving Stakar a bollocking on his behalf. “If I see any of yer ships on radar, I treat 'em as hostile. Especially yours, _Admiral_.”

Stakar's smile spreads slower than the entropic heat-death that will one day consume the universe. He makes a performance of his comfort as he slouches over the bed. But he taught Yondu that same performance; how to inflate his size with body-language, broadcast cocksure confidence, and have every other man in the room defer. The trick won't work on one already wise to it.

“My last offer,” he says, before the door can hiss closed and cement the disintegration of whatever unspoken thing has kept them from storming each other's galleons thus far. “Hear me out.”

It's that or war. Despite Kraglin's shaking head, Yondu does so.

 

* * *

 

They head for port. Half-melted snow sloshes under their boots, grimy from the air pollution and as grey as Yondu feels.

“Shit deal,” Kraglin says. His mate's stolen uniform hangs at the ass and crinkles around the belly, emphasizing the skinny pear of his figure.

Yondu grunts an affirmation. He pretends he ain't looking. Luckily, Kraglin's too busy watching their backs to notice. He scuffs slow circles in the slurry, blaster braced at a constant ready. Stakar guaranteed them safe passage from the Iron Lotus, but there's a lot of Contraxia between them and their ship. Now he's made the terms of their factions' co-existence official - Yondu pays him for the pleasure of trolling his territory, without receiving an ounce of protection or a glimmer of light over his grave - any enterprising blue-coat could stick a knife in Yondu's back without facing repercussions.

Kraglin doesn't like it. But Kraglin will have to lump it, because what other choice do they have?

“Think crew'll accept it?” he asks.

Shrug.

Sigh. “I'll check yer door's still blaster-proof, sir. You walk yerself to the nearest tavern and get shitfaced. I'll send Tullk and the other Bridge boys down for yer guard - should get here before yer too drunk to whistle.”

As a rule, cap'n takes orders from nobody, least of all their first mate. But every rule is made to be broken. Yondu's the poster child for that philosophy. Right now, he has a date with a dark room, a bot-hooker, and a helluva lot of booze.

He pats Kraglin on the flame patch. Then adjusts his coat, nods, and head off to test his toxicity tolerance, with the neon lights of the Iron Lotus glittering at his heels, and the streaks from Stakar's solar wings stinging his eyes like welts from a whip. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Yondu's thirst is painful. Next chapter: drunken Yondu shenanigans! Thanks for every comment :kisskiss:**


	12. Remembrance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: implied offscreen child rape of a minor character**

 Work hard, play hard; work hard, play hard. Fuck, sleep, steal, drink, repeat. That's the rhythm of Ravager life. There's no fun to be had butchering innocent Nova Corpsmen if you can't retire to a casino afterwards, to whittle away your cut of the proceeds on Orloni-rings and dice.

Yondu hopes he can keep their old rustbucket afloat and still have enough left to entertain his men. Admittedly that first part ain't difficult; once you've launched a spaceship into orbit it tends to stay there, unless you _really_ fuck things up. But the second bit's gonna be progressively tougher, what with Stakar's new tap on their accounts. To make matters worse, the jackass refuses to slacken his sentencing of Yondu's trade partners. As before, anyone who gives the ninety-ninth business is automatically slashed from the client lists of all other factions. It's a shun order as damning as it's powerful, and one day it'll be Yondu's ruin.

He snorts into his mouthful, swallowing to stop liquor squirting out his nose. It's almost like Stakar _wants_ Yondu to fail. And then what? Let himself be lynched? Or is he expected to crawl to Stakar on hands and knees, breaking all three of his self-ordained rules: _never beg; never be indebted; never apologize?_

Yondu's pride refuses to contemplate that option. If he keeps drinking though, it just might start.

He slouches over the bar and surveys the latest drained glass in case gin dregs contain the same mystical properties as tea leaves. His men will be angry. There's no doubt about that.

But they'll also be jittery, and high-strung, and more violence-prone than ever. If Yondu can keep his grip on the reins, he can _use_ that.

He can sic 'em on bigger, bolder prey – artillery haulers and the like. A fleet's worth of smuggling vessels are grinding through No Man's Space as he sits here glaring at the booze-slopped tabletop. Most of them are ramshackle tubs, old and temperamental as the _Eclector._ Also like the _Eclector,_ the average model is lined with lookouts and armed to the teeth, bristling with enough plasma canons and laser guns to convince their fellow hunters that they ain't worth the effort.

Yondu could take them on. He'd win, or he'd die trying.

Maybe he'll set his sights even higher. Bank frigates haul deposits from vault to vault, overflowing with gemstone cascades and star-diamond briolettes. Each is defended by a Nova flotilla. While Yondu's been weak to the lure of shinies ever since Stakar taught him what it means to own things, he's never been stupid enough – or desperate enough – to chase and nip so close on Lady Thanatos's heels.

If it'll keep his crew satisfied though, it's worth the risk. They'll do anything to fund their turns at the Orloni table.

For himself? Yondu sticks to the classics. Booze, more booze, and a bot-hooker to warm his dick.

Usually, this is the point in the night where Kraglin skulks off to do his own thing. Yondu's still internally reeling over the knowledge that _his own thing_ means banging pretty blue boys in dilapidated gaybars. But hey. He ain't nobody's judge. Today however, Kraglin has other plans.

It's as Yondu's mulling over the relics of his _n_ th drink, duster flicked so its tatty fronds brush the stool legs and boots propped on the rung, that his hazy vision informs him the shape by his side isn't an oversized shot glass, as he'd initially assumed. It's a man.

Tullk and co. drift close enough to draw pistols in a crisis while keeping their distance from Yondu and the bad mood that billows around him like a personal thundercloud. Seeing as Quill is trapped on ship – in the engine department to be precise, under Horuz's tender thumb – only one other person would be brave (or stupid) enough to approach.

Yondu waits for an explanation. When none comes, he snorts and kicks out the next seat over.

“Ya got my door checked fast.”

Kraglin takes it. The snow on his coat has long-since melted; clean rivulets streak the greasy varnish on his poncho. “Y've been here five hours, sir.”

Has he? The numbers on his chronometer are bright and squiggly, and they quaver like heat haze beneath thrusters. Yondu makes pleading eyes at them in the hopes they'll have mercy, then scowls in case they react better to fear. They don't. Kraglin's word it is.

“What'chu want,” he croaks, creaking further upright. His head doesn't want to leave its position: pillowed across his crossed arms. It takes a tug and a wince to unstick his sweaty cheek. “Show's over. I'm sloshed. Go home.”

“Sir,” Kraglin starts. He plucks at his cuff, pick-pick-pick, working a loose thread through the holes punched in the leather. “About what happened earlier -”

Something tells Yondu he ain't talking about catching Stakar in the act. “Not a word,” he says. 

Kraglin shrinks low. “Yessir.”

Yondu doesn't let him stew – Kraglin has this infuriating tendency to overthink things. Next he'll start assuming Yondu _wanted_ to kiss him, back when Martinex was patrolling the brothel floor and Yondu foresaw no way forwards besides slinging himself onto Kraglin's lap and hiding their faces by mashing one against the other.

...Or whistling Marty through, or grabbing a passing bot-hooker to snog, or a thousand other potential paths, all so achingly obvious in hindsight.

Yondu has far more important duties to attend to than 'what ifs'. Getting rip-roaringly drunk is first on the agenda.

“Fuck off and have fun,” he tells his first mate. Then he orders something hoppy to wash the memory of his tongue from his mouth, and tries not to think about the future.

 

* * *

 

 

Kraglin re-emerges when Yondu wobbles outside, braving Contraxia's eternal winter with an alcoholic overcoat. He catches his arm before Yondu can stumble into the road, dazzle himself in the headlight beams of the oncoming tram, slip in the slurry, and do everyone a favor.

Flagging down the shuttle, he feeds the automated meter the coordinates of a bot-hooker bordello, one far enough from the Iron Lotus that Yondu can forget about Stakar's existence entirely. He pops in Yondu's fare for him, because Yondu's fingers are shivering too much to count the unit chits. 

Yondu doesn't remember how they part ways. He doesn't need to; he can piece the story together from experience. Kraglin would've tactfully enquired if he was okay finding his way back to the docking bay, to which Yondu would've sent him scarpering with the threat of a drunken whistle. Because that's the way they roll, him and Krags. The way it's always been.

Kraglin cares too much, for a whippet-thin slice of a Hraxian who prefers knifing people to holding conversations. And Yondu? Yondu _overcompensates,_ because the thought that someone might give a genuine shit about him is more terrifying than navigating deepspace and realizing that the constellation you're headed towards is buried in the depths of a Beyonder's gullet.

A mouth gapes wider than that of a scaled-up pelican eel. The jaw dislocates in a yawn that could swallow a galleon whole – possibly a small moon besides. And there's Yondu, floating around the uvula. He's lulled by the warm, sleepy alcoholic tides, too dozy to bother with panic.

The madame enquires 'usual order, sir?' Yondu nods, waiting for the moment the teeth lock and the Beyonder swallows, and he's delivered into righteous oblivion.

When the bot-hooker arrives, sealed in her sterile container and wearing a pre-tweaked flirtatious smile, she has to help him stagger to the room where she'll wrap her thighs around his waist and grind on his face and milk his dick with mechanical ease.

The Beyonder's throat closes when he cums. It ain't real – a drunken metaphor that's run away with him. Nothing more, nothing less. But that doesn't make it any less disturbing, as Yondu thumbs cream from the girl's pussy, and an esophageal contraction sucks him down.

His body might be satisfied, but his mind is very far from. Bot-hooker algorithms don't factor for clients who sit numb and blank-faced for half an hour after their orgasm. When plying him to sleep and attempting to initiate round two receive equally lacklustre responses, her AI concludes that the only remaining option is to power down.

Her feet are as slim and yellow as the rest of her. They click against the podium. That's one of many clues that she's an empty sex toy, the others being the plastic veneer of her synthskin and the vacant smile she wears as her eyes dim and her head droops, battery feeds magnetically clamped to the ports on her nape.

Yondu watches her for a long time. They've even programmed her breasts to rise and fall, to mimic sleeping breath.

The galaxy delivers its lectures and seminars with brutal, aching honesty. It never pulls a punch. Not for no man, and certainly not for the thin blue boys and girls who were hustled into the Kree arena thirty-something years ago, flogged to the highest bidder.

Caring for anyone besides yourself is guaranteed to leave one of you grieving. _But,_ whispers the liquor in Yondu's belly. It erodes his mental guards like acid poured upon the foundations of a fortress, a maudlin spate of memories spurting out the breach. _Is this any better?_

There ain't no _risk_ involved, certainly. No chance that the bot will flip him on his front and do things, the sort of things that had been done to those Centaurian slaves too stupid or cowardly to chop off their crests while they were huddled in stinking crates under the Colosseum, listening to the commentator hyping the crowd.

Yondu was the youngest from his village. He'd clicked baby-talk and smiled at the slavekeepers until they struck him for it, and needed a hand to guide him as he toddled from cage to cage. Similarly, when the dagger, which one of the girls had slipped from the keeper's belt during feeding time, landed on his knees, he cocked his head at it curiously, entranced by his distorted reflection.

“Too young,” decreed an older boy, next in line. He spoke the new language, Yondu's first and his second. It was habit by now, even when they were alone. Being caught chittering in Zatoan was warrant for a whipping. “He don't know whas goin' on.”

Yondu didn't. He understood the hand over his mouth and the knife against his crest base even less.

He bit at the first cut. Not deep or hard – his milk teeth were sharp as a puppy's, but there was no strength there, and gnaw as he might, he couldn't puncture the skin. He rocked his face from side to side instead, not with any coherent escape plan, but just in case the slime of tears and snot on his cheeks would let him slither to freedom.

It didn't work.

The boy pinned him with his bodyweight, one knee on his lower back. He kept sawing, face grim-set against the twitches and the whimpers, and the breathless little sobs.

The end result was messy. Uneven, ragged, grotesque. This was in equal parts accidental, due to Yondu's squirming, and purposeful, so that no sane man would look at him and see something to be desired.

Back in the present, Yondu's rearwards recline on the bed is more of a collapse. He examines his palms. They're broad and blue, hardened to the shape of his M-ship joystick. The hands of a man. So different from how they'd looked back then. Small. Soft. _Weak._

But that weakness had been his salvation. Yondu clawed and thrashed and screeched for it to be over, and the boy held him firm while he hacked away at the bone columns, wrenching his crest brutally to one side.

The noise of tearing skin still clings to Yondu's eardrums.

Yondu can't remember the boy's name. All he knows is that there hadn't been time for him to perform the procedure on himself, before a keeper, alerted by Yondu's flailing, slammed into the cage.

He wrestled the knife from him. Ushered the quivering, cowering children onto the stage while interrogating his companions in a furious whisper, asking who'd let them get ahold of a weapon, because _don't you know there's freaks who'll pay double for a full-crest?_

That Yondu managed to walk at all, given the gore-dripping gash of his spine, won him the attention of the battle slave trainers. His legs only buckled when the boy, whose hand kept him upright – the same hand which had been plastered over his mouth not five minutes before – was ushered in a different direction.

Yondu ain't seen him since. Kid couldn't have been more than thirteen annual cycles (although to an infant's mind, that was ancient). If he's lucky, he died his first night under an Accuser.

Yondu pulls out the bottle that he'd stolen from the last bar – or rather, the one he'd brazenly snatched from under the barkeeper's nose, glaring at him the whole while. He pops the cork, savors the bouquet, and swigs. Had that boy decided on pragmatism over compassion, his and Yondu's positions could have been reversed.

Really, it just goes to show. Sentiment gets you nowhere but dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Another day, another Tragic Yondu BackstoryTM. This probably needs an edit, but I'm a sleepy bunny and will do it in the morning! Comments = love**


	13. What the Captain Saw

By the time Yondu lurches onto the dock, ice a glossy crust on his cheeks, the aurora is in full bloom. Contraxia has a thin atmosphere. It's unwise to linger for long during daylight hours – the oxygen content is well-regulated, but the lashings of cosmic radiation aren't so forgiving.

Right now, the solar winds swirl and soar. An opalescent kaleidoscope wraps the planet in marble. The slyph-like flurries shine brighter than the woman on the sign, sculpted from neon lights, who gyrates her hips over the _Iron Lotus_ in a jerky, three-frame animation.

It's been hours since Yondu lost himself between the perfumed synthskin of the bot-hooker's thighs. The time lapse has blurred into a corrupted tape file of staggers and stumbles and fights with his own reflection. He wobbles onto the outwards bound shuttle, belatedly grateful that he chose one whose embossed flame is accented with red rather than navy.

He loses another snatch of time before it judders into its bay. A weaselly face hovers above him. It's not the one he wants to see. Froggier for a start, and nervier, and half-obscured by greasy hair.

Yondu hates him for not being Kraglin. He plasters on his nastiest sneer, so Half-nut knows so.

Half-nut wrings his grubby hands. “Ya gonna sleep here, sir?”

His voice hitches like there's an arrow pricking his throat. Oh wait – there is.

Yondu whistles it back to its holster, but his clumsy lips fumble the note. It comes out more of a raspberry. Half-nut's reflexes prevent him from having to change his name to 'Three-quarter Ear', but it's mighty close.

Yondu flounders upright, resisting 'Nut's attempts to assist him. He channels his usual swagger, clumping down the gangramp with boots that feel as if they've been filled with concrete in preparation to send him to the bottom of a water tank. Whether or not his gait looks as confident as he feels, that doesn't matter. Yondu's wearing liquid armor; if he bonks off a bulkhead and jars his shoulder on the hangar doorframe, he sure as hell doesn't notice.

Time stops and starts again. His brain glitches like a faulty circuitboard. When he next becomes aware of his surroundings, his internal compass swings broken. The needle lurches around its pivot, as off-kilter as each drunken footfall.

The _Eclector's_ corridors meld into an amorphous labyrinth. The temptation to give in and accept his fate, doomed to roam his ship for eternity like the cursed hero in those godawful datapad novels, grows stronger every time Yondu passes the mess hall. He wants to sleep, dammit. Shut his eyes, let his legs fold, crumple where he stands...

But no. He can't do that. He's _captain._

Even if today's brought back every sour-tasting recollection of his past (from the hell Stakar rescued him from, to how the Ravager Admiral broke his chains and took him in only to discard him not ten standard cycles later) it's Yondu's job, his _duty,_ to plow doggedly on. Hell, more than that. It's who he is. Yondu doesn't surrender. He fights until he's on his last legs, then swings another punch out of spite.

Just like the Kree taught him, and Stakar after. That thought tastes more acidic than his stomach contents, which have worked their way into his mouth.

Yondu swallows. He belches, grimacing at his bitter breath, and savors the little flare of victory when he finally recognizes a corridor. Here. He knows this part. Up one ladder, cajoling his tired limbs onto each new rung. Then around a corner, open two biolocked blast-gates, and...

Yondu falls through his cabin door. He doesn't plan on getting up again. Beds are overrated, and it ain't like this will be the first time he's conked out on the nearest horizontal surface.

However, as soon as his chest thumps floor, he knows that something's amiss. Something serious. For one thing, he's not in possession of a welcome rug. And he's pretty damn sure he left his quarters unoccupied.

He pries himself off the ground, fingers dazedly curling against the prickly mat. His spinning ears – can ears _spin?_  – piece together a conversation, which blasts Yondu's pickled greymatter from several directions at once.

_Captain? Captain! Fuck! What the hell, sir -_

_Shit! He gonna be mad?_

_No. Probably won't remember. Drunk, I think..._

_What do we do? Fuck! He's gonna kill me! Thought your kind was only supposed to fuck bots..._

_Naw, he ain't gonna kill nothin'. Too pissed to whistle. Gimme a sec. I'll take him to his cabin._

_What, and leave me here?_

_S'alright, it's just across the corridor. I'll be back, don'tchu worry, beautiful -_

Whiskered lips press blue skin. Blue skin which doesn't belong to _him._ Yondu, inhibitions not so much _relaxed_ as smashed to rubble by a gin-shaped wrecking ball, snarls at the sheer _unfairness._

Then there's hands, familiar hands, hooking under his armpits, dragging him to something approximating vertical. Yondu sags at the knees, almost pulling Kraglin over on top of him. He fails, of course - Kraglin ain't strong, but he's tougher than he looks, and with legs locked out and spine creaking, he can just about heave his captain's weight. Yondu does his best not to be disappointed.

Last thing Yondu remembers of that night, amidst the confluence of black-outs and hazy memories, is Kraglin: naked and hairy and sweaty, dick slick from its jaunt inside the blue guy he left on his bed, yawning as he rolls Yondu onto the mattress.

He sets off for the door, once certain Yondu ain't gonna flop straight back off again. Yondu makes a good effort regardless, reaching for him with a whine that has no place emanating from the mouth of a pirate boss, whose bounty could buy him a small planet if he ever turned himself in.

Kraglin shoots him a fangy smile and shuts the door. It takes Yondu five minutes of lying in silence, willing his alcohol-sodden sponge of a brain into order, for him to realize how damn _regretful_ the idjit looked.

Like he wishes Yondu hadn't seen that. Like there's more he wanted to do, having his captain sprawled senseless and reaching for him over mussed coverlets, but he refused to allow himself.

Well, if he ain't gonna let Yondu hug him, Yondu has a pillow that can take his place. It's far too squishy, he thinks as he gathers it in his arms, burying his nose in it to stifle the disappointed groan. Kraglin wouldn't be _squishy._ He'd be slim and angular, and his bony ass would dig into Yondu's crotch, and it'd be mighty uncomfortable all around.

 _Or,_ supplies the booze, _Kraglin_ _could be big spoon._

Ribs grating his back. One skinny arm tossed over him, its twin pressed to numbness under Yondu's implant-laden head. Long legs crooked so his knees tucked to the rear of Yondu's like grubby jigsaw pieces. A cock between the cheeks of his ass, as Kraglin's had thrust between those of the blue man in his bed...

The blue man who ain't Yondu.

Yondu feels impossibly furious at that. This is worse than Stakar rubbing his mitts on what's rightfully his; worse than Quill demanding money for bot-hookers when the boy has yet to reach legal age; worse than himself for agreeing just to shut the brat up. Ain't no one Kraglin should be screwing, not without his cap'n's permission. That's how this works, right? Yondu has to vet the guy, make sure he ain't honeytrapping Kraglin, squeezing his first mate for intel...

Didn't Stakar mention that the Kree are gunning for him? They always have been and always will be. Yondu's learned the hard way to never trust another blue. Kraglin could be in danger right now. There might be a garrote around his throat, or a stiletto blade poised besides his earhole, ready to punch through the drum and into the soft tissue beyond. He might be begging, pleading, for his cap'n to save him.

A round of uncoordinated flailing brings Yondu to the edge of his bed. His knees crash on the floor, painless but loud – although the _painless_ part has more to do with the ratio of liquor in his bloodstream than the damage done. He has to wait a moment to orientate himself, swallowing his next vomity mouthful.

 _Ugh._ His dry eyeballs scratch the underside of their lids, and his throat's no better off. He feels wretched. This is all Kraglin's fault. If he hadn't been screwing that blue guy, Yondu wouldn't have had to leave his nest. He could've laid there and choked on boozey chunder in peace. But no _._ Kraglin had to find someone to bang. So now Yondu has to march in there _this instant_ and tell him...

What exactly?

He ain't worked that out yet. But he's Captain Udonta – somethingiest-something to terrorize the starways. He's sure it will come to him.

Yondu crawls for the door, pausing every few shaky motions until his stomach contents catch up. He sees the blinking red lock-panel long before he reaches his destination, although it takes so long for its significance to percolate that Yondu shoves the door several times in the interim.

It remains shut. It _taunts_ him with its shutness. 

Yondu smacks it – then catches a second glimpse of the lock panel, and bashes his forehead against the steel instead. Dammit. Unlocking the damn thing requires him to stand, or at least kneel and stretch. Yondu has neither the balance nor the will.

It ain't often he admits defeat, yet Yondu sees no alternative. He slides flat out. He tries to do so gracefully, but gravity takes over and deposits him on the floor with a cavalier thump.

And so he lies where he's fallen. He tries to whistle. He blows a lot of spit into his beard. He remembers to heave himself onto his side so he won't drown when he upchucks in his sleep, then he curls in a miserable, snow-soaked ball of leather and closes his eyes. If there's one positive, it's that the door's cold barrier, pressed flush to his spine, soothes the phantom ache in his crest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Yawny-yawn. This is another edit-in-the-morning job, methinks! Ah well. Comments = love!**


	14. Back to Business

Sleep is blessedly dreamless – or at the very least, any dreams don't leave enough of an impression to be recalled, once the klaxon on his wristwatch announces he was supposed to be on Bridge fifteen minutes ago. Mind you, Yondu ain't aware of very much after that, other than _noise_ and _headache_ and _gonna puke._

Yondu smacks his wrist until the first stops, ignores the second, and swallows the third. He grumbles groggy nonsense, and gingerly explores the dent in his forehead from where it pressed to the sealant ridge around the bottom of the door. He struggles through the jumble of memories – fragmentary, splintered, hazy as a mirage – until one swims into focus.

A bright blue ass. A dusky pink dick, kinda snakey in comparison to his own. A surprising amount of pleased moans from the guy on the bottom.

Not that Yondu has experience with folks who ain't literally designed for fucking. But he suspects those yipping keens as Kraglin sunk in, then swung back, then sunk in and swung back some more, the shiny blue ring flexing around the girth of his cock, had all been genuine.

He eases upright. The door is a smooth and tractionless ladder. He has to worm vertical inch by inch, digging in his shoulders so he doesn’t slide straight back down. Once his feet have been located, at the ends of his ankles where they belong, Yondu judges the distance to the bathroom. He decides it ain't worth the extra effort, just so that he can swill and spit and dry-heave over a waste receptacle, and scrub himself with Kraglin's loofah until his skin itches and burns as much as the cavity in his chest.

Kneading his creased brow – the wrinkles deepen as the solars pick up his sluggish movement and snap into life – Yondu heads for his bedside dresser to rummage for clean(ish) underwear and Hair of Dog.

He never makes it, because that's when a canon blast impacts on the _Eclector's_ flank.

She veers violently sideways, yawing and spinning and tilting in a dizzying imbroglio that her gravity gyroscopes can't hope to keep up with. She would've performed a full pirouette, had the engineers not emitted a rumbling thunderblast from the thrusters in the opposite direction.

Oh yeah. They space-docked not five kliks from Stakar's frigate. And Stakar, waking from a similar bender (although no doubt hangovers slide off him like snowflakes sizzling on solar wings), will have been informed of what Yondu did to his bo'sun. In particular: the medical bill, and the year of physiotherapy that's recommended for breaking in a new prosthetic limb.

“Shit,” croaks Yondu. He peels himself off the wall as the gravs reset, and slams the biolock. Staggering through the blast-door lined chute towards the Bridge, he pounds the nearest pipe. The result - a hollow, gong-like boom - makes the whole tunnel reverberate. “Kraglin! Oi, Obfonteri! Getcher lazy ass out here!”

Kraglin hears his bellowing over the racket. He scurries out his door, rumpled and flush-faced, greeting him and hopping into his boots and smoothing the porcupine quills of his mohawk all at once. Yondu spends a second too long staring at the unfastened front of his jumpsuit, through which curly chest hair and the grizzled streak of a treasure trail are visible, curving over a little lump of belly.

But that's only because his eyes are too sore and bloodshot for him to look away. He gets ahold of himself when Kraglin jerks up the zipper.

“Let's go, sir,” he says. He gestures along the light tubes, which funnel plasma-pulses in a ship-spanning network, each throb honing on the Bridge. Judging by the lack of nervous over-the-shoulder glances, he's booted his blue beau out. Probably flown him planetside personally, because the idiot always was too considerate for his own good. Which means the sex was fun enough for Kraglin, most punctual of Yondu's lackadaisical lot (admittedly, not saying much), to bask in the afterglow for longer than it took for Yondu to dredge himself from his hungover sleep.

“Sir?”

Yondu jumps. Then scowls, in case Kraglin dares mention it.

He doesn't. Good lad.

Yondu overtakes him, boots chiming over metal plates and bouncing grills, a thunderous bell-peal that's never given chance to fade. Kraglin's right there besides him, shortening his pace to match. They don't say another word until they're on Bridge. Then it's all business; Kraglin breaks from Yondu immediately, loping towards the on-deck engies, who have already commandeered the holoprojectors and crowded the air with exploded diagrams. Kraglin isn't put off by their jargon. He assesses their shield status in an efficient sweep of his eyes.

“Warning shot only. Minimal damage. But sir, her gunports are locked and loaded. No chance of a counterstrike without pre-emptive fire.”

Yondu whirls to grab his nearest nav. He hauls Oblo halfway off his plinth, so close that he can count the man's greasy pores. “How the hell did they get the drop on us?”

“Well sir, you weren't here -”

“And ya can't take evasive manoeuvres without me holdin' yer hand?” Kraglin's next to face his captain's haggard wrath. Dropping Oblo - who shakily starts correcting all the charts and diagrams disrupted by Yondu's lunge - he rounds on his mate.

“Dammit, Obfonteri. Y'know yer supposed to cover for me! I thought I promoted you 'cause unlike the rest of this orloni-shit lot -” This orloni-shit lot, more than used to their cap'n raining insults over them in a crisis, sigh and get back to work, diverting power from the engines so it can be siphoned into shields or laser canons at a moment's notice. “-You actually got two stones in that brain o'yers, and every now and then they rub!”

Kraglin looks shocked. Taken aback, even hurt – like Yondu ain't bawled him out for less serious misdemeanors. But better he make that expression than _concern,_ and better that concern be for the bags under Yondu's bloodshot eyes or the tinder dry rasp of a voice, than whatever Yondu might have seen when he got the wrong door last night.

Stupid lock-overrides. It's a blessing to be able to open any hatch on the ship – especially when Quill's in a grump and barricading himself away from the galaxy. It also means that he's walked in on a number of crewmates enjoying janitorial cupboards for functions other than their intended purpose - including, on one occasion he’s done his absolute utmost to wipe from his memory, but which requires more moonshine to obliterate than Yondu has healthy tissue left in his liver, an incident involving Taserface and one of the other galley chefs in Cleaning Closet 7A on Z-deck. He just never expected the victim of his accidental voyeurism to be Kraglin.

The guy sleeps opposite him, for stars' sake! Yondu's species might technically have been planetbound, but he's a starwalker by nurture if not by nature. He learned wayfinding from Stakar himself, and it'd take more than a flagon of pan-galactic gargle-blaster to leave him muddling his rights and his lefts.

He must've arrived at their dead-end corridor from the wrong direction. Several miles of ship-intestine stuff the space between the hangars and the Bridge deck. The tunnels are hard enough to navigate sober with a map. It’s no surprise that he got turned around. Yondu's only impressed that he wasn’t wobbling through the halls until the shift buzzer rang, at which point a superstitious idjit would mistake him for a wraith - the ghosts of Ravagers past, whose souls never heard the horns of Ogord - shoot him, and save everyone a lot of trouble in the long run.

He's less impressed with Kraglin. His mate stares at Yondu. His mouth is a downturned purse, and the lashes rimming his big blue eyes clump together with sweat. He looks more _hurt_ than if Yondu had balled his fist and rammed it into his solar plexus.

Yondu could put that to the test, but he's feeling merciful. He snorts, dismissing him with a curt turn. The man needs to get his priorities in order. Stakar could be up to all sorts of shenanigans, from readying his second battery and preparing to board, to fleeing through the nearest jump-portal. But pivoting away from Kraglin brings him face to face with Quill, who's shaking his head like _Yondu_ _'s_ the one who needs chastisement, and mouthing _apologize._

Yondu snarls at the pair of 'em.

“Back to yer stations, boys,” he growls, tapping the belts that crisscross his torso, holding his arrow in place. “We continue this later.”

Or not. Stakar's contact flashes on the comms screen. Vaas, a bald purple chick who's always been a fraction big for her boots, snaps her fingers for Yondu's attention. He'll chew her out for that once they're out of the danger zone.

“Boss, here! Should I leave him hanging?” Her finger hovers over the block button, eyes mischievous slits. Yondu stomps over and shoulders her away, taking her chair with a relieved grunt at getting his weight off his legs.

“You oughta wait for my damn order before gettin' ideas like that, that's what'chu oughta do. Stakar. How's tricks? Nice of ya to wait for the start of the morning cycle before openin' fire. Lettin' me get my beauty sleep an' all. I appreciate that in a man.”

Stakar makes a sneering appraisal of Yondu's unkempt beard and his clothes that are obviously slept in. “You need a helluva lot more of it, Udonta. And I'm surprised that you're still attuned to my operational hours. Should I be flattered?”

“You should be hightailin' it in the other direction.” Yondu hears the creak that means their canons are charging, metal flexing and popping as it expands around the superheated plasma-cores. “I'm thinkin' you deserve payback for that lovetap.”

Stakar shrugs. “A wake-up call only. I agreed to let you rent a Ravager-free portion of space, for an annual stipend -”

That earns groans from several Ravagers on the Bridge. Half-nut and Vaas are chief among them. Well, they can suck it up. Didn't see them volunteering to help negotiate – not that Yondu would've let them. Few things are more dangerous than those who covet power, and that pair have long-since proven that the only allegiance they hold is to themselves. Occasionally Taserface, should the odds ever stack in his favor - which they just might start to, if Stakar succeeds in his mission to bleed them dry.

“'Rent',” says Yondu through his clenched jaw. “It's space. It can't belong to ya unless yer an Empire, that's _the point._ An' anyway, we's Ravagers, so it ain't Ravager-free now, is it?”

“Hm.” Stakar treats him to one of his patented down-the-nose stares.“Ravagers by name and flame only. It takes more than that, Udonta, and you don't have it.”

Kraglin's teeth gnash. He stands besides Yondu, forgiving in spite of the earlier outburst, and Yondu's absurdly grateful for that skinny support strut. “Les blow this pig out the aether, cap'n -”

Damn, but Yondu loves it when he gets protective. Only he _shouldn't,_ because he's a man, and a Ravager captain too, despite whatever Stakar says. He doesn't need no scrawny, surly Hraxian to defend him. So he decides that he actually hates it when Kraglin acts like he can't fight his own damn battles, and shoves him out the way of the whirring projector. “I give the orders here!”

Kraglin looks at him like he's crazy. So, separated though they are by half a klik of vacuum, does Stakar. Yondu clears his throat.

“I mean. Men! Les' blow this pig out the aether!”

“S'what I just _said..._ ”

When Yondu fingers his arrow, Kraglin shuts it. Stakar chuckles to himself and shakes his head. “These fools aren't worth the expense of plasma,” he declares to Martinex, who hovers at his shoulder, smirk carved from interlocking crystals. “Let's return to our hunting grounds. Yondu, I expect to see that first cut, and soon – else we're going to reclaim what's rightfully ours.”

He doesn't quite spin his ship in a screech of tyres and fly off into the sunset, firstly because it's powered by thrusters, secondly because they're in space, and thirdly because there are too many suns to choose from. His galleon is a sleek silvery trapezium. It's even designed to look aerodynamic – which is stupid when there ain't no air resistance to drag on the gunwales, but it makes for a mighty nice aesthetic.

Yondu's vessel, in contrast, might be generously described as 'retro' or 'vintage', rather than 'antique', 'should be on display in a Nova museum', and 'how the hell is that thing still flying'. Yondu seethes after Stakar's tail-lights. The bastard's gone before his canons finish priming; exploding away from them in a lingering streak of Bifrost-light.

“I hate that a-hole,” he growls. Kraglin nods along. He even hoiks a gobbit of spit at the ribbons that streak through the black, as the blaze left by Stakar's lightspeed activation dims slow as a supernova.

Yondu makes him buff the window afterwards, but he'll admit to being flattered.

“Alright," he says, once the glass has been polished to his satisfaction. He sprawls on his chair, making an artform out of inelegance, a performance of confidence and sleaze and fuck-the-galaxy ferocity for his men to suckle on like baby bilgesnipe at the teat. "I've brokered us free reign in these here parts, so les' make the most of it. Vaas? Sweep the new trade routes for schooners. Tullk? Wind the guns down, but keep ‘em hot. Kraglin? Prep the M-ship swarm."

He claps. The sharp crack jerks everyone to attention. Yondu turns it into a rub of his palms, hard enough to generate warmth, and dons the dirtiest grin he's worn outside of a bordello.

"Buckle up, boys. We’re gonna make money.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This chapter features one of my beloved OCs - Vaas, who stars in an abandoned old project of mine, Peter and the Wolves! She basically did a Nebula in that, and would probably do the same in this universe, if given half a chance. She's a peach.**


	15. Dead in the Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Apologies in advance....**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CN: gore, drowning, dead bodies**

Money is made. Not much of it, but enough to keep both fuel pods and gullets wet. Stakar is paid. The crew grumbles and gripes and someone whispers the word ‘abdication’ before being escorted out the airlock. Luckily, the majority of Ravagers are too dumb to know what it means.

But anyway. Stakar’s attempts to make Yondu crumble have only made him more determined to win. All he’s gotta do is persevere, he reminds himself. So long as he doesn't have to kneel before that bastard and beg him to repeal the tariff he’s levied on their hunting grounds, Yondu's classifying this as a victory.

Of course, it would help if his crew would quit murdering each other. What with this new strain on their coffers, Yondu doubts they’ll be getting a new recruit batch any time soon.

So you can understand his frustration when it's another day-cycle, another five minor crises to field before breakfast, another trade ship dead in the water - and to top it off, there’s a body in the watertank.

Yondu _could_  assign the dredging to whichever Ravager irritated him most last week. But Half-nut's off doing something shady, and Yondu needs the physical exercise. Too much boozing lately, and not nearly enough running to work it off. Just because Yondu relies on his arrow to fight doesn't mean he can slack. Getting flabby on the job equates getting dead, when you next have to outsprint a pack of Klyntar.

Plus, Kraglin's cute blue buttons (which he bangs with worryingly frequency now he's been reassured that firstly, Yondu doesn't give a shit where he sticks his dick, and that secondly, Yondu doesn't want that dick in him) all tend towards the trim. Not that this has anything to do with it, of course.

The drowned man feels clammy to the touch. He's bloated like a sponge, absorbing the water he's poisoning with his moldering entrails.

Yondu only twigged the root cause of their problem after Vaas called in sick (meaning she didn't show up to her post in the morning, and when Yondu went to chew her out he found her half-drowned in her own chunder, with no moonshine flagons in the vicinity). She'd burbled a groggy ' _water',_ and when, in a rare fit of generosity, Yondu fetched her some, she'd smacked it to splatter over his bootcaps, pointed at her puke, and repeated herself.

Yondu loses his will to play nursemaid after that. He hollers for Half-nut to drag her to the medbay – git ain't visible, but he's a skulking type, and Yondu would lay wagers on him lurking within earshot. To Vaas, he dispenses an eye-roll and a scolding for exaggeration.

One swig of the gunk spewing from the Bridge faucet proves her story though. The water supply is always discolored, but now it's disconcertingly _mealy._ When he swills it around the bottom of his cup, it slops rather than splashes. And if that ain't enough of a clue, there's the _smell..._

Yondu takes a headcount to ascertain the identity of his floater. It's fruitless; his Ravagers are about as herdable as cats. Nothing left to do but slither feet-first into the cool putrid depths, armed with a breathing mask and a rope.

Neither, as it turns out, are necessary. The corpse is mushy in its clothes. Yondu's headlamp illuminates a face swollen beyond recognition, the color of a day-old bruise. But whoever the guy is, he floats quasi-upright, buoyancy not yet lost. Yondu, treading water, bare toes splayed so he feels the liquid stream between them, gathers the corpse in a smelly and one-sided embrace. He hauls it along under the armpits, loop of wet rope scratching his back, and kicks for the ladder.

There are several tanks like these, scattered around the _Eclector's_ top deck to give the lower levels water pressure. The water itself is generated as a by-product in the fusion process. While it tastes faintly staticky, no one's died from it yet – if it does damage, it's slow-acting to the point where most Ravagers don't live long enough to suffer the ill-effects.

Yondu can't feel the bottom. The tanks turn the deck into an assault course of ladders and corridors that swerve out at ninety degrees with no warning. Each one is twenty foot tall, warping the ship around them like pre-plasma-age bullets lodged in flesh. They can be accessed through the drainage system after they've been emptied, or by a maintenance hatch, used for incidents like these and biocoded to open only for engineers and Bridge crew.

The man must have been very determined to have found his way in. Or he had help.

Yondu's shoulders smack the first rung. He grunts, dropping the body and sculling until his bare feet locate the limescaled metal. Then pushing up, ignoring the sharp bite on his soles, he lugs the deadweight after him.

As soon as they're out the water, the effort increases exponentially. Man's holding a lot of liquid. Ain't no light in this tank, other than that provided by the lamp crudely taped to Yondu's breathing mask. If he was a lil' wuss like Quill, he'd probably be scared shitless by the thought of dropping into a dark well of water that sunk sheerly on either side, bottom too far off to be thought of, and flailing around in search for a dead thing.

But Yondu ain't Quill. He's long since mastered the art of indulging his imagination only on special occasions – so when thinking up new threats, or means of wheedling information out of captured Corpsmen. Ain't no point fearing the lurking, many-mouthed things that are rumored to haunt the derelict stations towards the galaxy's edge, things of shredded shadows and disturbingly humanesque screams. You do that, they become real – or they might as well do, in your mind. Then you exit the tank a shivering wreck, not fit to captain.

Yondu's shivering, but for the right reasons. This tank ain't equipped with a boiler, so he can't instruct one of the boys to make it toasty and have himself a bath. He stripped his leathers before he entered – he loves his coat, but the thing comprises a fifth of his mass, and it would drag him to the bottom in seconds. The wet shreds of his underwears stick to his thighs, as chilly as the rest of him. It ain't a long climb – only five steps – but that feels like a stars-damned cliff-face when there's a waterlogged corpse over your shoulders, blackened gunk gleaming under the beam of Yondu's headtorch.

A very familiar waterlogged corpse, as it turns out. And one with the shape of Kraglin's knife embedded in reverse relief through its neck.

Yondu groans, toeing Half-nut's sodden locks from his face. Water squelches from his open mouth. His eyes are milky and sagging, a little concave in their sockets, on the cusp of rot. No wonder he's so heavy. Kid's a skinny git, thinner than Kraglin, but right now he's saturated from his hair to the bisected ballsack that earned him his nickname.

A few crewmates have shown up to watch. Kraglin's among them, doing the on-duty equivalent of wringing his hands and dancing boot to boot (so: shuffling like there's lice in his pants and plucking the loose stitching around his flame-patch.) He scurries to Yondu's discarded coat and holds it out to him, shoulders shrunken in, deferential and small.

Yondu takes it. He ignores the jolt as white fingers brush blue. “The fuck's wrong with an airlock?” he asks.

Kraglin wilts further. If he gets much closer to the ground he'll be lying on it. “Panicked.”

“Yeah, folks tend to when they murder someone.”

Kraglin's eyes dart to the arrow. It had entered the tank with Yondu, strapped across the scars as a half-hearted shield from prying eyes. If anyone asks why though, like hell was he gonna leave it for Taserface to smear his greasy paws over in search of an 'off' switch.

He lets Kraglin stew until he's fully clad again, and discovers, to his displeasure, that he actually prefers it when the guy's eyes are raking over him with interest rather than fear.

“Did he deserve it?” he asks eventually, fluffing his collar around his neck. He's still damp, having shaken off rather than towelled, and the leather sticks unpleasantly to his skin. But the good thing about water is, it dries. They'll drain this tank and eject the foul-smelling contents, made brackish by the body, from their waste ports. Kraglin can treat it to a scrubbing, and Yondu'll give him five minutes to hop out before they refill it, if he remembers.

Kraglin considers. He sets his jaw – Yondu hardly notices; there ain't very much of it – and nods.

Yondu nods too. “Good,” he grunts. He snaps his fingers for volunteers and, when none step forwards, selects 'em. “Gef, Oblo. Take this to the incinerators. Full rites, the usual.” Half-nut squelches when he kicks him. Yondu's glad Kraglin had the sense to leave him in his leathers – that tough second skin is all that’s holding him together.

Quill picks his way forwards, grimacing at the smell: wet rot and the contents of a seeping lower intestine. “Uh, Yondu? That’s Nutty, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh. Take this as a lesson, y'all – he might look kinda scrawny, but this right here's why ya don't disrespect our mate.”

The crew grumble. They side-eye Kraglin with a new wariness. Half-nut was an oddball even by Ravager standards and he won't be much missed – but Yondu's too much of a realist to think this will blow over.

There's a subtle difference between captaincy and tyranny. Letting his mate get away with murder might just tip it. The Code covers matters of this nature – but Yondu don't much like what it's got to say on them.

He would've preferred it if Kraglin had taken out Taserface. That would've led to uproar though – the bombastic asshole has Yondu's knack for talking loudly enough that even if folks don't like him, they take notice. Half-nut spent most of his time sniggering with Vaas or scolding crewmates he caught making their crusty socks crustier during the night shift. Stupid evolutionist religion – idjit will be given a Ravager funeral, as is proper, but he's headed to the afterlife of his people, and long may he remain there.

Yondu steps away, rubbing his hands and sniffing them. He pulls a face at the lingering odor _._ Perhaps a shower is in order - and he'd rather take it with company.

Yondu collars Kraglin, arm nooseing his neck in a lock as secure as it's unbreakable. “Walk an' talk, Obfonteri,” he growls.

Kraglin tugs futilely on his wrist. “Do I get a choice, sir?”

“Not after that stunt ya don't.”

Quill is still making retching noises. Oblo and Gef shrug and heave the body up between them. Half-nut's arms move too loosely in their sockets, as if they'd pop out if it weren't for his starched leather sleeves. He leaves a trail of stagnant juice. Yondu steps through it, uncaring for the squelch, and drags Kraglin solemnly after.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Apologies to any/all Half-nut fans!**


	16. The Water's Fine

Yondu walks. Kraglin talks.

That's enough of a role reversal to have folks squinting at them. At least, Yondu _hopes_ that's why so many gazes cling to their coat tails. News travels fast on a ship this small, and if any among the crew don't yet know the culprit behind Half-Nut's untimely demise, they will by cycle's end.

Kraglin's flow falters. He's recounting the tale of how Half-nut sauntered by while Kraglin was tying tongues with the piece of blue he'd picked up at their last pitstop, and made some snide remark about Kraglin's color preferences. He'd insinuated several things – all of which were bypassable, with a pair of knuckle dusters and a bout in the rings.

But then he'd brought up some new information, gleaned from portside gossip. The Kree had raised Udonta's bounty again, it seemed, and selling him back would repay every single one of their faction's debts. Not that Half-nut was _insinuating_  nothing, oh no; he was just mentioning it in passing, because if Kraglin was as hard-hearted as he claimed, then surely he'd at least _consider..._

Half-nut had been too blotto to notice his babble wandering out of the 'annoying' range and into the 'mutinous'. Kraglin had taken it as a threat to his captain and reacted in kind. That's all there is to it. No undermining of Yondu intended, or of his role on this vessel as arbitrator over life and death.

At least, that's Kraglin's story. He trails into mumbles, shrinking his shoulders as if the stares of the crew are physical weights, crushing him like garbage in a trash compactor. Those churn away below. Their hydraulic rumble echoes from deck to deck as they pack waste into cubes, ready to be fed into the matter converters, where it will be stripped to its raw atoms, rejiggled, reshuffled, and reconstituted again.

A few old Bridge operators went out that way, after falling from favor with the crew. They slithered down a stinking chute, slick with putrid run-off, to meet their deaths in a crunch of splintering bone. Ain't a nice way to go. Kraglin deserves better.

Thing is, an unliked captain is in danger of mutiny. But if his usurpers follow code, that captain will be marooned rather than keel-hauled. A first mate, however? They ain't _quite_ important enough to tip the balance from murder to assassination. Far more disposable. Far more _replaceable._

Kraglin ain't though. Not to Yondu, not yet. And if a small voice in Yondu's head whispers _not ever,_ Yondu makes sure it stays there.

Glaring at the onlookers, Yondu hooks Kraglin by his elbow. He steers him towards their quarters. If there's to be fall-out from this, the crew can light their torches after he's scrubbed Half-nut's diluted bowel contents off his face.

He stomps through Kraglin's door rather than his own. There are empty bottles on his bedside table, and a mountain of those trashy Xandarian datapads, because reading them is apparently drunk-Yondu's new favorite pastime.

There are also too many balled-up tissues scattered across his bedsheets for comfort. Sober-Yondu is blissfully unaware of drunk-Yondu's antics, and he doesn't want to know whether they're sticky with tearful snot or jizz. Both options are honestly as bad as each other, so Yondu lets the question hang unanswered and the tissues build up: dunes of crispy yellow that crunch when he rolls in the night.

Kraglin's welcome mat ain't all that welcoming. It's one of Quill's presents from years back, before the boy realized he'd never get anything in return. Its jaunty 'fuck off' message is written in swirling Xandarian script, and the bristles scrape Yondu's bootsoles as he ushers Kraglin through.

The room looks like it did the last time he was here (so: when he found Kraglin balls-deep in his latest fling). It's smaller than his, but not by much. Fusty-smelling, and far more spartan. There ain't no trinkets or fidget toys (not that Yondu would ever call his collection that. Not  _his_ fault the figurines he keeps lined on his dashboard are so damn easy to twiddle with when you're concentrating.)

Yondu glances around, noting the overflowing ashtray and the industrial-sized lube pot besides it. Gummy dribbles coat its sides. The lid is nowhere in sight, and the lube has developed a skin from where it's been left open to the air. The finger-shaped hole is crusty, granulating like a week-old wound.

Yondu's been preoccupied recently. The bounty from the Kree, this whole Stakar-business, Half-nut in the tank... To say he's got a lot on his plate is an understatement. But perhaps he ought to pay more attention to his first mate. Between the rejection and the accidental-voyeurism and the kiss they ain't never talking about again, they've had quite the time of it, these past weeks. If Yondu's been glugging from a bottle every night, chasing a few hours of oblivion where his past won't hold him accountable for his sins, maybe Kraglin's been overindulging in his vices too.

The wire-thin bicep tenses, Kraglin straining in Yondu's grip. “Uh. Boss. Shower. Ya said shower, right?”

Yondu shakes himself out of the daze. He realizes he's staring at the lube pot with the sort of scowl one usually reserves for vermin. He can't ask whether Kraglin's using protection, not without coming across as over-interested. But that's no huge hurdle. He'll sneak a blood sample to Doc Mijo for her to run her STD-scanner over, next time the idjit gets himself shot.

For now though, Kraglin has a point. The stink of the dead wraps them in a cloying shroud. Yondu, nose scrunched, kicks the shower door open and hustles Kraglin wordlessly in.

Once there, he starts stripping immediately. Arrow harness first, then the buckles that lash his coat in place. The bundle is shoved against Kraglin's chest, and Yondu's shirt follows suit.

Kraglin doesn't look at the brands between his whip scars: the names and sigils of masters past. He handles Yondu's leathers wide-eyed, like he's been given a cache of gemstones rather than a wadge of sweaty old hide. He places them reverently in the locker while Yondu cranks on the taps and coaxes the boiler into compliance with some choice cuss-words and a boot. Then, after another moment's indecision, Kraglin unzips his leathers and slithers out of them, a pink-flushed tadpole of a man who follows his captain into the steam.

Wash rooms on the _Eclector_ vary in scale and shape. They're constructed ad hoc around bunkers, artillery rooms, armories and dorms, filling space like gas in a vacuum. However, despite what they lack in uniformity, each shower block adheres to the same simple layout.

Water is fed in via domed copper valves. Nozzles squirt over anyone who walks beneath, while the steam is funnelled to the clothes-locker under pressure, scouring the leather with blasts hot enough to scald. The scoops under the drains catch their dirty suds and flush them to the matter converters, where anything drinkable will be extracted and purified and pumped back to the tanks. Wash, rinse, repeat.

These rooms are functional, designed with a camber around the drain. Outtake-fans whirr in the ceiling, and the lights are unadorned strips. But despite his leeriness at all things frivolous, Yondu can't bring himself to scrap the tub.

It's rarely used. Ravagers don't factor weekly spa treatment into their schedule. They leave the luxuriation and exfoliation to the wives of wealthy Xandarian businessmen. As a result, when Yondu climbs the steps and runs his finger around the bath's edge, it comes away a lil' scummy. But the water is relatively clear, and it don't smell of dead-man soup. Ergo, Yondu's gonna sit in it.

He enters, swallowing his hiss at the heat, and sinks slowly to the chin. Then, after waiting five seconds to ensure the solvent concentration ain't gonna melt him, he breathes out and burbles to the bottom, opening his eyes underwater so he can watch Kraglin's hairy shins break the surface, surrounded by skittish shoals of bubbles, each smaller than the head on a pin.

Knees follow those shins. And thighs, as Kraglin perches on the underwater ledge. They're as pale and gaunt as the rest of him.

Ain't much there to squeeze. Yondu likes a curvier bothooker, and he'll order custom if they only come in petite. Heck knows why he's even _considering_ pinching Kraglin's legs though, let alone comparing them to those of the silicone variety.

Yondu bursts upwards, froth exploding over the implant. He snorts a stream from his nose. Eyes stinging, he takes the seat opposite Kraglin, kicking out his legs so they float. Any nudges of his foot against his first mate's inseam are coincidental.

If there's one place he _doesn't_ look, it's Kraglin's crotch. He saw enough of that last time (and in his moonshine-soaked dreams, although that probably speaks to trauma). He's pleased – absolutely delighted, not disappointed in the slightest – that Kraglin affords him the same courtesy.

This bath smells a helluva lot nicer than his last. It's also kinder to his homeostasis, and Yondu's fingers and toes stipple as the numbness recedes, capillaries widening under tough blue hide. Kraglin's looking pleasantly pinked opposite, although that could be due to Yondu's proximity.

Yondu stretches, muscle rippling. He smirks when that hypothesis is confirmed – and smirks wider when his expression, eyes low-lidded and underfangs crimping his lip, only makes Kraglin blush more.

“What?” he drawls, elbow propped on the tub side. His other hand cups water to pour over his scarred pectorals, lingering long enough to feel the too-fast thrum of his heart. “Like what ya see?”

Kraglin swallows. His eyes are glassy from the steam. They're also locked on his, very determinedly, as if looking anywhere else runs the risk that they won't stop wandering. “Y'know I do, cap'n. But look, about Half-nut...”

Idjit's worried. As he should be – a murder among their own ain't to be taken lightly. But Yondu can be lenient, when he's in a good mood. Kraglin thought he was doing the right thing. He decides to vindicate himself further, leaning until the space between them is slimmer than the gap between two confessional booths, waves slopping against Yondu's pouch.

“He was a danger, cap'n. To me. To you.” Only very laterally. Half-nut talked shit, and he did so with gusto. But it never would've amounted to much. Poor kid was just looking for a rise, and had too much whiskey in his system to know when to quit.

Kraglin knows it, cause Kraglin ain't a dumbass. But then again, Kraglin assumed Yondu reciprocated his affections for stars-know how many years, so perhaps he ain't as smart as he seems.

Yondu sighs. He floats both feet to prop in Kraglin's lap - because it's at a convenient height, obviously. When Kraglin's hands fold on top of them and his spiky shoulders relax, something warm ignites in Yondu's stomach.

He can't smell death anymore. Only steam - and the stale huffer-smoke on Kraglin's breath. When Kraglin circles his thumb under the ball of his foot, then freezes as if realizing what he's done, Yondu intervenes before the idjit can ruin the moment. He makes a chittering purr in the back of his throat.

It's feigned, of course, for Kraglin's sake. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for his next noise, as Kraglin's head snaps up and he studies him for an inscrutable second before repeating the same process on the other sole, pressing hard enough to be felt through the boot calluses.

Yondu _groans._

He also damn near kicks him in the goolies, which is suitable vengeance. “Ticklish,” he complains. Then regrets it, when a shit-eating grin crawls over Kraglin's mug. “Oh no. Don't you dare. Don'tchu fuckin' dare, you hear me, boy -”

Kraglin grabs his foot and scrabbles his nails on its underside. Yondu spasms off the seat and into the deep ring at the pool's center, fitting helplessly in Kraglin's grip as he flounders, mouth full of too much water to whistle.

That _jackass._ Yondu reveals one weakness and he takes advantage? Maybe he's been conspiring against him all along, biding his time for the day when he can get Yondu vulnerable...

Or maybe he just tickled his fucking foot, a fact Yondu's still having difficulty processing the sheer _absurdity_ of. Because they're in a bath together, skin softened by humidity, and because Kraglin, for some unfathomable reason, _likes him._

Yondu emerges, spluttering apoplectic nonsense out his mouth and half the pool out his nose. One foot's still captive on Kraglin's lap, the other crooked awkwardly against the seat underwater, while his arms windmill to keep his torso afloat.

“Good dip, sir?” asks Kraglin, innocent.

Yondu kicks him in the teeth.

After they've retrieved his incisor – it takes half an hour, and Yondu's shivers restart as they sweep the drained bath on hands and knees, underwear donned for modesty's sake – Kraglin thinks to ask again. “So. About Half-nut -”

Yondu shrugs, plucking damp fabric off his ass. “Brig for the day. If anyone asks, I whipped ya – do me a favor an' fake a limp.”

Kraglin raises his eyebrows. “Thas hardly gonna discourage the mutterin's 'bout us, sir.”

“Yeah well.” Yondu takes a breath, soap-infused steam scratching at his lungs. “Mutterings is mutterings, Obfonteri. I'll deal with any sods who say shit to my face, and the rest can do as they please.”

Kraglin looks impressed. Like he thinks Yondu's _matured,_ or some shit. He steps over the rim of the tub. His legs are long and the color of mud, thanks to their matted carpet coating. Yondu waits until his back's turned before getting out himself, having to clamber over the high lip where Kraglin can stride.

“Next time,” he huffs, once he's back on his feet and feeling captainly rather than ungainly and graceless and disconcertingly creaky around the knees, for a man who ain't yet peaked forty, “handle disposal better.”

Kraglin nods, sage and serious, his bloody tooth cradled in his hand. Then asks whether Yondu's ticklish anywhere else, and ducks so the arrow can shoot past overhead, a calculated inch too wide.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Comments are cherished!**


	17. Rest In Pieces

The funeral is a drab little affair. Yondu deducts the units they're wasting on fireworks from Kraglin's next paycheck, and his mate is wise enough not to bitch. They watch ash spiral from their backburners side-by-side, a fan of redcoats behind them, and when Yondu raises a clenched fist to his chest and thumps twice, the gesture ripples out among the crowd: a snare roll on leather.

No one dares state the obvious – that this is a sham, a charade, a Ravager funeral in appearance alone. The beams from their headlamps are negligible when compared to the black between stars. Their Horns of Ogord sound more like a lampoon than an imitation. The loudest brassy bass note a galleon their size can generate is scarcely enough to make the floor grates jump in their casings.

When amped to full power, thrust blasting in all directions to keep them stationary, a ship like Stakar’s _Firelord_ would resound like a pipe organ. The reedy blare of Yondu's _Eclector,_ in contrast, could be mistaken for a whoopee cushion.

Half-nut might’ve been an Evolutionist nutjob, and Yondu's first to admit he didn't like him. But he deserves better. They all do.

The facts of the matter are indisputable, however. The Gates of the Aether-After remain closed to all who fly under the Udonta banner, portcullises clattered down and vats of boiling oil lined up along the bulwarks. That's okay. Most of them are jaded enough that they don't give two shits about what awaits them.

What they do give two shits about, however, is dissent among their ranks.

“Murder,” says Taserface, breaking the silence. “Of a comrade. A _brother_.”

Vaas, thin arm hooked over his shoulder, nods. She ain't one for tears, but the scowl crumples her face like fold-mountains. “That's a whippin',” she hisses. She fakes a cough so her hawk and spit at Kraglin's feet can be passed off as accidental.

“Already done that,” Yondu lies. Taserface shakes his head.

“Bullshit. His limp's faker than Scrote's toupee.”

Scrote, who had been sniggering in Taserface's shadow, now shrinks on himself and tugs self-consciously at the faux-blonde monstrosity. “You don't gotta point it out _..._ ”

Yondu ain't looking at Taserface. But he sees his smirk in the reflection – like he sees Kraglin staring straight ahead, out through their mirror-image, to where the dissipating fireworks turn Half-nut's remains from glitter to dull grey smog.

And Quill, of course. The sixteen-year-old is watching him, like they all are, waiting on his verdict. Only unlike the rest of the Ravagers – who, with the exception of Tullk and Oblo, are either nodding, slathering, or a second away from clapping their hands and stomping their feet like Kree purebloods around a gladiator ring – Quill looks more nauseous than when Yondu first hauled Half-nut from the tank in a deliquescing mound.

“Half-nut threatened my position,” Yondu says slowly, like he's talking to children. “Obfonteri was defendin' it. Don't see nothin' wrong with that, personally.”

It's a gamble – odds stacked over whether Taserface is smart enough to suss Yondu's ploy. Unfortunately, those odds ain't in Yondu's favor.

Taserface draws himself up, Vaas's arm wrenching at the socket. He grins with the smarmy glee of the self-righteous.

“There's Code for this, y'know,” he says, addressing the throng but sneering at Yondu. “Cap'n knows it, I wager that. An' Code says he's the only person what can kill one o'us for misbehavin' – exceptin' self-defence. All of us here knew Nutty, myself included. And -”

“And,” Vaas spits, rubbing her bloated belly, “he _talked a lot of shit._ Bark was worse than his bite. I know it, we all know it, Obfonteri knows it too.” She glowers at him, needle-thin teeth overflowing her snarl.

Kraglin still faces away. Yondu hopes he's the only one close enough to spot the suppressed flinch at Vaas's next words:

“He wants a whippin', same as any of us'd get if we was in his shoes. Cap'n dishes discipline, right? I say we hold him to that. Ten lashes, like it says in the Code!”

Shit. This has the potential to get nasty. Yondu clears his throat and tries not to think about what he might be sacrificing.

“Tomorrow then,” he says. He manages to sound authoritative rather than croaky. “Hangar-Z.”

“Cap'n dishes the discipline,” Taserface repeats. He has the audacity to sound smug about it.

Yondu spins on him, needing a vent for his fury. But he knows the lash on his tongue - “ _I don't need no remindin' of how t'run my ship!_ ” - ain't nearly as sharp as that which will cleave the thin flesh from Kraglin's ribs next cycle.

His words fall on a retreating back. “I'll see ya there, then. Captain. Obfonteri.”

Kraglin makes no acknowledgment. His shoulders twitch when he gulps, and the pat from Tullk and the awkward nod from Oblo go equally unnoticed.

They're the last ones left in front of the window, after Quill makes to say something and Yondu glares him off the Bridge. Kraglin keeps his fist tight to his breastbone. His chin is half-absorbed, what with how hard he's sucking his lip.

“S'okay,” he says, too fast and with a strangled hitch. “S'okay.”

It ain't – no way near. He's only saying so for Yondu's sake - which smarts all the more, because Yondu ain't the one who needs comforting.

“Only ten,” he says, letting the hoarseness he'd hidden from his men grate like swallowed razor-blades. “I won't go hard.”

Kraglin's fist is clenched past bloodless. “You gotta.”

“I'm captain. I don't gotta do nothin' I don't wanna.”

“No.” Kraglin's stubbly lashes quiver shut. Yondu misses his eyes as soon as they're locked behind paper-thin lids. Their blue ain't bright. More often than not it's of a rheumy consistency, because Kraglin's race is adapted for tunnels rather than stark solar lights. But Yondu likes that color, likes the way it makes him imagine a pinch of him worming under Kraglin's skin to distil itself in his blood. “You gotta.”

Tremors rattle Kraglin's wiry forearm against his ribs. Yondu absorbs it all: the flare of his hairy nostrils, the quiver of his wrinkly chin.

“You tellin' yer cap'n what to do?” he asks. That has Kraglin exhaling, moustache flattened by the force of his snort.

“I ain't – Yondu, look. You know it. Crew want a show, an' -”

“I ain't flayin' ya, Kraggles. I ain't gonna do that. You can't make me, Taserface can't make me, Stakar hisself can't get down off his high-horse and order me to whip yer skin off in exchange for a seat at the table.” Yondu grabs Kraglin's bicep, just short of bruising, and shakes him with a glare that could pierce Celestials to their planetary core. (Or so he hopes. He ain't looking forwards to that confrontation, although if the stars have mercy it's decades off yet.) “D'ya hear me, boy?”

Kraglin ain't looking at him. He doesn't nod. Captain's word might be law, but both of them know a captain won't stay captain long unless he tosses his crew the occasional bone.

Kraglin, to carry the metaphor further, is bone-shaped. He's tall and pale where he leans against the window, away from Yondu's grip. Yondu watches him, and he watches the ashes scatter through the black, a swirling gritty nebula of clinker-coal and dust. Neither of them say another word until they're gone; spread so finely among the radiation and comet-shards and darkmatter that they might as well have never existed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Apologies for the short, late chapter! I'm on holiday, and I've been plugging hard at my Yondu Week pics, so I'm a little behind. Next chapter will be far longer though, because I have no sense of proportion. (And. Uh. I'm sorry. XD)**


	18. Sweet Dreams are Made of This

Yondu careers into bed like an M-ship streaking through atmosphere, fuel lines cut and brakes offline. His mind feels worn as a stone rubbed smooth by the Dizerall oceans, and the muscles in his right shoulder twinge as if he's already landed his strikes.

He doesn't expect to sleep that night. He's wrong.

 

* * *

 

Fingers splay across his chest, like the spiders that haunt abandoned stations in orbit around extinct stars. They're bleached and ghostly from lack of light. They squeeze his pectorals, rubbing them together like Yondu would with a bothooker's breasts. They caress his face, lingering under the angular slant of his jaw. They cup the scar that sits over his heart, where a Kree tried to carve it out before Yondu killed him.

They press until they feel the beat. It thrums faster and faster, as a pale body moves over him, and stubble brushes his own, and thin lips part in a gasp...

Yondu slams upright, panting and sweating, arms locked out and braced on the sheets.

The sticky sheets.

“Shit,” he says.

When people say 'my heart skipped a beat' they're usually speaking figuratively. But Yondu swears he feels it happen. It's like a swallowed burp, a bubble that bursts in his throat and makes his intercostal muscles clench.

He just... In his own bed! Like a goddamn teenager. The cycle before he whips his first mate ragged, no less.

He refuses to study the snapshots of the dream. They linger half-formulated, diluted by the simple process of pushing himself upright. Oddly, he doesn't think he's ever purchased a bot-hooker with bodyhair.

His muscles remember how to bundle sheets and carry them towards the laundry chute. But it takes him long minutes of tramping through dim corridors and tripping on every rat-gnawed blast door to remember he ain't some twenty-standards brat no more, sneaking around Stakar's ship after lights-out.

The _Eclector_ has no centalized laundry system – she'd have to have been built in the last astral century for that. Dirties clog the steam-rooms above every showerblock. They're left until they're clean or forgotten about. Yondu's headed in the wrong direction, last time he spoke to Stakar he nearly put an arrow in his eye, and he sure as hell ain't twenty.

He about-turns with a groan, hitching up the pants he'd grabbed on his way out the door. Ain't often the _Eclector's_ balmy enough to let him sleep in his birthday suit – Yondu opts for an average minimum of three layers. But the night was a mild one, and his skin had misinterpreted the sensual glide of sheets over scars. He'd assumed he was with a hooker, and reacted as was natural for any hot-blooded, virile, young (ish) man.

That's the answer. Nothing more to it.

It couldn't have struck with worse timing though. Tomorrow he takes the whip from its case in the armory, and lets it lick Kraglin's flesh. Tomorrow he gives him uglies: a matching set to Yondu's own.

His are hidden by a shirt. Not because he's _self-conscious_ – it'd be pointless anyway, as the residents of this block ought to be hitting their REM cycles right about now. But the leather barrier stops Yondu from imagining that same brindle-pattern on Kraglin, swathes carved across white skin rather than blue.

His boots slop about on his feet. He hasn't bothered with zips and buckles. He's tired enough that they feel like bags of cement strapped to each ankle, making his steps a slow shamble – but he's glad he remembered to yank them on. It's never safe to wander the _Eclector_ barefoot. Ravagers have this terrible tendency to carpet floors in broken bottles, snapped knife blades, and the occasional splintered femur. If your soles aren't thick enough to withstand volcanic glass, you're due nasty slices and a tetanus shot.

Plus, after Kraglin's tub-time discovery, the news may well have spread, ballooning from one compartment to the next like a fireball. _Captain's got ticklish feet._ Next thing he knows, he'll round a corner to find Quill on the floor, ambush at the ready...

That's ludicrous and Yondu knows it. Kraglin's proven time and time again that he ain't waiting for the opportune moment to sell Yondu's weak-points to a galaxy that covets his blood. Plus, the poor sod's got direr things on his mind than sowing gossip. Not tonight.

Ship's buzzing alright – but it's in anticipation for the whipping, not at Yondu's expense.

 

* * *

 

Yondu ain't _really_ expecting to tread on Quill. When he does, he throws his armful of sheets in the air and makes a quiet, refined, and very manly squeak. Luckily, the kid drowns him out.

“Augh! Yondu! What the hell?”

Yondu recovers quickly. He snatches the sheets from where they've folded over the kid like stinky off-white wings, and draws himself up to yell. Then remembers that it's some ungodly hour of the night-cycle, and lowers his voice to a whisper, all the hoarser and more furious for it.

“ _'What the hell?'_ I oughta be askin' you that! Why you underfoot, boy?”

“Ew.” Quill wrinkles his nose, craning away from the damp drapes. “They smell. You're really doing laundry in the middle of the night, boss?”

“Yes!” snaps Yondu before Quill can think it through. “Couldn't sleep! Back to you! Floor. Why?”

Luckily, the adrenaline of his wake-up call has waned. The kid's dozy enough to not find Yondu's interrogation suspicious. He yawns and uses Yondu's leg as a ladder, pulling himself to sit. “Gef snores. Really, really loudly.”

Yondu's eyebrows express disbelief.

Quill deflates. “I keep thinking about tomorrow, is all. About you, and Kraglin, and...” He trails off and lip-wibbles for a few seconds, before pulling himself together. “And Taserface says he'll break my Walkman if he catches me playing it during the night cycle, and you say that if I fall asleep on shift you'll feed me through the sausage grinder...”

Had he said that? Undoubtedly. Had he meant it? No. If he's gonna eat the kid, he'll treat him to a long slow basting, so the taste of his puppy-fat flavors the meat. The kid doesn't know enough about intergalactic butchery to realize this particular threat is empty. Better that way, Yondu supposes.

Maybe Quill will suss Yondu's brand of tough love for what it is, once he's fully grown and no longer requiring protection. He'll understand then, after a few years fielding the galaxy on his lonesome. He'll know how much worse Yondu could've been.

For now, Yondu just sighs and prises Quill off his bootcap. “So ya go sleep in a storage cupboard.”

The kid clings far longer than Yondu would allow anyone else without breaking their fingers. “What? Like Cleaning Closet 7A on Z-deck?”

Yondu gawps. “Hell no! Who told you about – Kid, I want names. Yer way too young for that.”

“I'm sixteen.” Yawning, Quill takes Yondu's surprise as an excuse to help himself to his leg again. He uses the loose-hanging straps on his boots as rungs. When they run out, Quill grabs Yondu's pants to haul himself the rest of the way. The fabric bites, even when he tenses - which is strange, because his abs are as mistakable for a washboard as they were when he was doing a hundred crunches per cycle in the training ring.

Well, maybe a lil' podgier. But not _much._

Quill smirks. “Ain't like I'm a virgin, Yondu.”

Yondu cuffs his head. “Ain't like I need to know!”

“Yeah, well. You bought me my first bot-hooker, man. Which was weird. Why not a real chick?”

“Real chicks're dangerous. A bot-hooker's only programmed for one thing. Just tell me you ain't been to that damn store closet.”

He doesn't know what he'd do if that was the case. Probably work his way through his roster with a checklist and a tongue-screw until he had a culprit to carve a new figurehead out of, to be pinned to the front of the galleon until the strain of jump-warps blasted the body to fleshy smithereens.

Quill's already shaking his head. “Not my scene. I'm more into boobs – just not silicone ones, y'know?”

He scratches his jacket, beneath which Yondu knows lie the relics of wounds caused by all the girls over the years who've tried to rip out his thorax when they caught him cheating. Yondu stitched most of them himself. He'd chortled the whole while, one boot propped on Quill's belly to stop him squirming while he yanked the sutures through, and sloshed the stitches with far more sterilizing alcohol than was necessary.

“It's no fun, when the chick only does what she's programmed to,” Quill continues. “C'mon, boss. You gotta admit real girls are more... _invigorating._ Unpredictable, y'know?”

Yondu's mouth opens. Yondu's mouth shuts. He elects against blurting something stupid like _I wouldn't know, actually._ Quill might start filling his head with stupid ideas.

Stars knows where he finds space to store them all. But Terran brains don't abide by the laws of physics. Quill has infinite room between his ears to log nonsense about Yondu's character – nonsense like _captain doesn't let Taserface slow-roast me, ergo he must appreciate my existence,_ or _captain hasn't slept with anyone whose actions aren't determined by circuitry, because he's scared of emotional attachment._ Dumb shit like that.

“Yer sixteen,” he says instead, glaring ahead in the hope that Quill will lose interest and go back to sleep. “I ain't having this conversation with a kid. By Nova law, you ain't old enough to get yer dick wet.”

“Says the guy who bought me a hooker, climbed on a bartop, and declared to the hen party opposite (and I quote): ' _lil_ _Petey Quill here's just hit open season, so if he says 'yes' to any of you ladies he deserves everything he gets'._ ”

Yondu remembers precisely none of that – which ain't to say it didn't happen. “No idea what yer on about, kiddo.”

“And anyway...” Quill seems oblivious to the thousand unspoken dismissals Yondu's broadcasting. He trots by his captain's side, bouncing off a few wall-partitions along the way. “I ain't the immature one here.”

He nods to Yondu's armful.

Dammit. Now Yondu really _does_ have to kill him. Or at least, terrify him to the point where this secret will be safe.

He drops his bundle, grabs Quill by the throat, rams him backwards, and hauls him halfway up the nearest rusty column.

“What did ya say?”

“Nothin',” Quill chokes. His knees crash into Yondu's gut hard enough to wind. Kid's grown since the last time he tried this, and Yondu's bicep strains from the effort of keeping him aloft. He lowers him, but doesn't break the glare.

“Good lad. Now repeat after me – _cap'n spilled booze on his sheets._ ”

“Cap'n spilled booze on his sheets,” Quill parrots. He doesn't sound happy about it. He's even less happy when Yondu shoves those same sheets into his arms, quelling the protest with a whistle.

It ain't so threatening when he's left his arrow harness looped over his chair. But he constructed the _Eclector s_ o that no part of it will ever exceed yaka-range. Quill is so attuned to the sound that he snaps his heels together without checking for a gleam of vibrant red radiation, streaming from his captain's belt. That doesn't mean he can't bitch though:

“Ugh! I need five hundred baths...”

“And you can have 'em. _After_ them sheets're smellin' like roses.” Yondu stretches, grunting as his spine clicks. Semi-sawn vertebrate flex and grate in a chain of busted bones, the memory of a phantom _tahlei_ swaying overhead. “Now scat. I need to rest up before tomorrow.”

Quill's a teetering ship mast, sails furled in his arms. At Yondu's words, his grimace gets all puckery, mouth like a cat's backside. He backs away from him, touching as little of the sheet as possible, sneering all the while. “How do you sleep?” he asks. He tries to sound scathing, make it a challenge; but Yondu hears the fear underneath. “How do you sleep, cap'n, when you're gonna... when you're gonna do _that_ , to Kraglin?”

Quill don't know shit about where Yondu came from. Yondu intends to keep it that way.

“Like a baby,” he lies, and whistles again to make him run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **oh _yondu_**


	19. Whip, whip

The dream binds itself to him like oil to water in an emulsion.

Long, pale limbs. A flat chest. An inexplicable excess of body hair.

Yondu's ship adheres to the triumvirate watch cycle used by Ogordian crews. If it ain't broke, why fix it? It means each of his men get an eight hour sleep shift, plus eight more for target practice and bot-fucking and loo breaks, before they're expected at their stations all enthused and fresh-faced, ready for the new day. Yondu ain't gonna switch it up just to satisfy his pride – especially since he can't think of anything better.

The dull ambience suggests he has hours to kill before he demonstrates proper whip-wielding technique in the Z-hangar, using Kraglin as his model. Ain't no way Yondu's getting back to sleep. He decides to hew away at his prosthetic; then, when concentration fails him, he selects a datapad-tome from his shelves, flings himself on his bare mattress, and flicks on the backlight so he can enjoy some quality garbage literature.

Ain't no fun without Kraglin. The idjit has an impressive vocal range; he does the voices better than anyone Yondu knows. His falsetto's fucking hilarious – like an Orloni snorting helium. He makes the birds sound the perfect blend of vapid and lispy, as their menfolk pin them to walls and _impale their_ _love triangle_ with their _turgid column of man-flesh._

But that just turns his mind to _his_ column of man-flesh. Not that it's turgid, following the half-forgotten flurry of his dream. For some reason though, when he imagines Kraglin hoisting his latest pretty blue thing like one of the floozies in the book, it makes a sly twitch, plates contracting against his thigh.

...Which makes him think of Kraglin attempting the same thing on his own person. And because this is a fantasy, not a world where under normative gravitational conditions Yondu weighs approximately twice as much as his mate, Kraglin manages.

Yondu slowly puts the pad down. Then, after a long pause and a lot of gulping, picks it up again.

He rewinds a few paragraphs, text scrolling to the scene's start. Then he licks his lips – why's his mouth so dry, all of a sudden? - and rereads, substituting names and descriptions where appropriate.

Kraglin's body is taut as a stretched garrote where he presses Yondu against the piping. He treats him to a wicked smirk, unrasping their flies with a harsh zip-scratch. There are no love-triangles here. Kraglin moans wetly into his mouth, and suddenly they're naked, and Yondu's legs are round his waist, and his first mate's hipbones dig into the meat of his inner-thighs as...

Yondu's just thinking about it _scientifically_. That's all. He's trying to fathom what all those blue boys see in his washed-out scruffy ponce of a mate.

His hand creeps into his waistband without his permission. Yondu extracts it, and resolutely sets the datapad aside.

Going for two rounds ain't impossible, but it's a little trickier than it used to be. Although stars-know why he's considering it, as he doesn't get off on the thought of nothing being shoved up his bunghole. If that's a double negative, it can be blamed – along with most idiosyncrasies of his speech – on the vernacular of the Kree fighting cages, which was for so long the only language he knew.

The Kree bred their slaves. Course they did.

A good fighter with strong genes could produce one of similar standing, or better should their bloodline be mingled with another warrior-class. Yondu's pouch might technically categorize him as a carrier, but seeing as none of the Centaurian females in his pod survived long enough to fill it, it had been declared redundant and stitched shut before he was thirteen. By the time Yondu grew into a formidable enough fighter to be considered a stud, his masters had developed artificial gestation technology, and no longer had to cudgel one slave onto another.

There's probably a few blue brats with his genealogy scampering around Kree battlefields. Might be yaka sensitive, might not be. Ain't his, not the same way Quill is. As Yondu doesn't have enough sentiment to go around, they'll have to make their own way in the big bad galaxy; blaze their own trail like he did. Builds character, or something.

But that's past. Every time Yondu lets himself wallow in his memories, slopping through a swampy, sludgy quagmire of humiliation and sawn-off crests, he fears this may be the time he can't clamber out again. After that little segue, returning his thoughts to Kraglin is almost a relief.

Or it would be, if those thoughts didn't revolve around Kraglin's mouth. Or the damp squirm of a tongue over his when Yondu mounted his lap outside Stakar's suite in the brothel. Or the way he'd gone so perfectly still beneath him, only to melt into the kiss when Yondu framed his face with his broad blue hands and sucked on his lower lip like he was looking to leave a lovebite right there, at the juncture where soft skin met stubble.

Or the snap of a lash over his back.

Skin in tatters.

Blood.

Jeers.

The weight of the whip in Yondu's palms, the smell of Kraglin's fear, and the way his mate would chew on his whimpers until his ribcage quaked from the force of sucking them in.

Yondu drops a hand over his eyes. He's grateful to that second set of thoughts, in a sick sort of way. One awkward trip to the steamrooms is enough.

 

* * *

He wonders whether Kraglin slept. If he has any sense, he'll have tried. Kipping on his back is a luxury he won't be enjoying for quite some time.

Yondu steels his scowl in front of their mirror, practising holding the expression without a waver. He'd hesitated when Taserface demanded retribution. That had been stupid. Even more stupid had been trying to haggle – because Taserface is right. He knows the Code. Yondu memorized it down to the sub-clauses in smallprint, after he was kicked from Stakar's clan. For a while, he'd nurtured the hope that the Admiral had been joking when he sneered at Yondu from over the captains' table and decreed him _banished, dead to us, no lights over your grave,_ and all it would take for Yondu to rejoin the ranks was for him to score full marks in a pop quiz.

However, as Kraglin's door creaks open and a baggy-eyed Hraxian totters though, Yondu can't help but wonder whether some rules were made to be broken.

He doesn't like whipping folks. Too many bad memories. But sometimes, duty calls, and men are idjits. On those occasions, Yondu drags them to the post in the middle of the lowest hangar, stained orange with the pain-steeped blood and sweat of the last occupant.

But this ain't just any miscreant. It's  _Kraglin._

Kraglin, who pauses upon seeing him, jaw waggling unattractively at the nadir of its yawn, before forcing a tentative, tight-lipped smile.

Shit. He can't do this.

He can't have him knelt as he had knelt, the bones standing out under his thin skin as Yondu's had stood out, back when he'd been lucky to scrounge five hundred calories a day. He can't raise that black strap as a similar one had been raised over him, a Kree insignia stamped on its base, and let it fall so the crack and scream ring loud. He _can't._

Kraglin shuffles for the steamer. He doesn't talk, for which Yondu is grateful – because he has no idea what the fuck he's supposed to say.

 _I'm sorry?_ No. For once, this ain't his fault. Not even Quill could construe it as such, although doubtlessly the kid will try.

As Kraglin slid that knife between the strings of Half-nut's greasy mane and dropped him into the tank, listening for the splosh before shutting the maintenance hatch and skulking away, he must've known what he was doing. But he chose to do it anyway – and with such a half-assed lazy disposal method that Yondu is almost as disappointed with him as he's pissed.

It will cost him, to forego Kraglin's punishment. A clause stipulates the captain can take a whipping on themselves, if they want to spare their victim the indignity. However, Yondu recalls what happened the one and only time Stakar used this form of chastisement against him.

Or rather, he remembers others' descriptions of it. Yondu himself had been locked out of his head for three days, and his only concrete recollection is nuzzling Stakar's bloody hand, thanking master for teaching him his right from his wrong.

There'll be no going back, once the crew sees that. Plus, it will only cement to Taserface that Kraglin means more to Yondu than any other code-breaker.

His gaze trails to Kraglin, as he turns the circular wheel of the steamer. His back looks thinner than ever, fragile as one of the huffer sticks Yondu can see, poking from the pocket of the jumpsuit he's left crumpled by the door. As Yondu watches, the steam bulges its way down the copper pipes, obscuring Kraglin's mohawk in a scalding white froth.

He has to do something. He has to _try_. Maybe enough time has passed since the incident with Stakar that Yondu can pull this off? He's older (definitely), wiser (debatable), and far more hardened to hurt. The blows will glance off him like rain from Xandar's chrome streets, thundering through the storm drains to the sea.

“Don't.”

The first word Kraglin says all morning, and with the grate of the extractor fan and the hiss of steam, Yondu's half-convinced he imagined it. He stoops, swiping his coat and pulling it over his shoulders, more aware than ever of the lash marks that crisscross the ruin of his crest, over and over, too many to count, scar tissue overlaying scar tissue like shells crushed together to form chalk. But before he can stomp back to his cabin in search of booze, huffer, anything to drown the reality of this day, Kraglin speaks again.

His shape is a shadow without a caster, wreathed in billows that smell of rust and soap. It looks like he's holding himself, where no one else will. “Don't,” he repeats. 

Don't... what? Don't whip him? Yondu will do his damned best not to, even if it means demanding that Taserface challenge him for the captaincy there and then. Kraglin, as always, knows him far too well. He preempts the promise with a shake of his head.

“Don'tchu go soft on me,” he whispers. “They'll know. Swear me that, cap'n.”

Yondu latches the snake-clasp on his belt. He nods, and walks away.

 

* * *

 

It's time.

The Ravagers gather like flies to carrion. They're a seething mass, indiscernible from a distance, a buzzing cloud of giggles and whispers and grubby red leather. Yet if you examine each individually, you realize they're all disgusting in their own unique way.

Gef has the majority of his breakfast gummed in his beard, stretching between gingery strands like cobwebs in the vaults (which are hoovered dry and empty, a hollow pit in the _Eclector's_ core as large as the one currently disembowelling Yondu). Vaas still looks peaky, after ingesting however-many quarts of water tainted by her dead boyfriend. And then there's Taserface.

He stands at the head of the crowd, arms crossed. He might've been gloating, but as the plasma blast he'd taken to his ugly mug a decade back seared off his lips, his expression resides at a fixed midpoint between a grimace and a skull's toothy grin.

Yondu weighs the whip. His fingers curl naturally into the grooves. There's only one among his Ravagers who hasn't seen fit to attend. Even Tullk and Oblo are there, although their scowls suggest they'd rather not be.

As for Peter Quill? There ain't an orange foam headphone in sight.

Yondu hopes he's had the sense to squirrel himself far, far away. Screams have a tendency to percolate in ships this old. The copper pipes and plasma tubing make for excellent tuning forks, conducting sound as easily as electricity. Sometimes you hear snatches of conversation from around the next bend, only to march around it and discover a dead end and an empty wall.

The superstitious blame the disembodied voices on ghosts. But while he's no engineer, Yondu does have a handful of brain cells to his name. A few days of research (meaning him hollering about on Bridge while Kraglin and Peter toured the tunnel system and reported when they could hear him) reassured him that the noises ain't no more eldritch than the occasional whiff of toejam through the vent ducts. Unless Peter locks himself in the airlock and depressurizes, surrounding himself in a womb of silence, there's no way to escape what's coming. Not for him, not for Yondu, not for anyone.

Kraglin stands side on like he's ready to bolt. The blood drains from his face. He's the only ghost here: wan and wobbly, hunched at the neck like a vulture, his beaky face in profile. His eyes flicker between Yondu and the whip, iris ringed by white.

Kraglin's a goody-goody by Ravager standards. He's in his captain's good books, he aces more missions than he fails, and he ain't stupid enough to break Code (or so Yondu thought, until yesterday). He's visited this post before, but only as a spectator.

Yondu ought to order him to strip down and take his place: gripping the handholds that are hacked into the post's rusty sides. But the words gum halfway up his gullet. They're astringent as acid reflux, so sour he damn near gags.

Ironically, the shake in his whip-hand makes Kraglin form a fist. He firms his mouth, and turns away. The clang as his knees hit metal echoes around Yondu's head long after it's faded. The floor is uninsulated: bone separated from steel by well-worn leather. It must be cold, and uncomfortable, and by the end of the session there'll be pressure welts carved into Kraglin's kneecaps. But that'll be the least of his worries.

“Jumpsuit,” rumbles Taserface. Yondu resists the urge to turn the whip on him instead. It's already made of lead, and it's only growing heavier – approaching the compacted density of a neutron star. It drags on his arm muscles, making his biceps ache and his joints slacken as his body wills him to let it fall.

Kraglin wriggles from his uniform, squirming like a Beastie when it sheds its larval shell. He's sweated enough that the leather clings. The slow peel of it from his shoulders leaves Yondu staving off a shudder.

His back hair doesn't look nearly so thick, not when it's all that stands between Kraglin and the lash.

Wiry muscle shifts under skin. Kraglin, head bowed and jumpsuit folded to his waist, holds the bars and breathes out. His knuckles are impossibly paler than his face.

Taserface is smirking, Yondu hears it in his voice. “Do it,” he says. Then, when Yondu hesitates - “Do it now cap'n, or I will.”

Yondu can't put this off any longer. It would be cruel to, when sweat is beading behind Kraglin's collarbones, trickling around his shoulderblades where they erupt from the smooth line of his back; when the Ravagers are stomping and snarling and egging him on with each pound of boot and rasp of booze-laced breath; when Yondu's heart is beating so fast that all he hears is a roar, indistinct and constant but driving towards the crescendo...

The whip slaps the ground behind him, snaking across the steel.

“Ready?” he asks, soft and low as if it's only them.

Kraglin nods. Yondu swings.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **huehuehue**


	20. Run Me Like A Racehorse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Sorry this is late! This past week was a bit of a wobble for me. But heyyyy, here you go.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CN: GRAPHIC WHIPPING.**

Kraglin's teeth puncture his lip and his jaw crunches so tight he probably pops a tooth out. But he doesn't make a single noise as Taserface bellows “one!” and the Ravagers whoop.

Yondu doesn't eke it out. He remembers what it's like to be on the receiving end, and pacing the blows only makes it worse. If you pile them on together, there's a chance you'll overtax the system and send your victim into shock. However, so long as they're of a tough disposition (as most Ravagers tend to be; they wouldn't survive long otherwise), the pain will cap itself after the third or fourth chew of leather. Leaving a longer gap only gives you more time to recuperate. It lets the anticipation build, forces you to process what's been done and all that's still to come.

And so, he strikes, and he strikes again.

Crack.

The stripe cleaves Kraglin from shoulderblade to hip. He sees the flesh open, as if in slow motion, muscle glistening from the inside.

Too low.

Yondu readjusts his stance. The whip smacks the floor behind him, an extension of his arm. He wonders if he ought to feel powerful, wielding the weapon with which his masters carved him apart. Maybe if he had one of the other Ravagers knelt before him – preferably Taserface or Vaas. Anyone but Kraglin.

For now, the parallels scramble inside him like undercooked novahawk eggs. It's only ten. That's a small thanks, but it's something, and Yondu clings to it. He sees himself, flickering between the years: a snivelling blue toddler, a bundle of stick-thin limbs, an angular little warrior with dead eyes.

He'd been on fifty as a minimum, the year preceding Stakar's rescue. If Ogord hadn't blazed in like a big damn hero, this is how he'd have met his death: clinging to a stump in a Kree auditorium, surrounded by the bellows of those who paid to watch him bleed. He wishes there was some sort of trick he could've imparted to Kraglin beforehand. Something to prepare him, to help him past the pain.

But there's nothing. Only the same tactics Kraglin employs now. He heaves ragged gulps of air, swallowing more than he breaths. Each time the whip draws back he hiccups, and blood trickles down his wrists from where the jagged handholds have punctured his palm.

He doesn't make a noise until Yondu reaches eight. That's enough to win the Ravagers' respect, although they hoot and holler like monkeys at his high-pitched whine.

Yondu wants to fling the whip to one side and fetch the bandage reel he's left on the sidelines. He wants to eject the cursed thing from the airlock. He'd toss it in the incinerators, if there wasn't a chance it'd be waiting for him in the afterlife, hanging in empty space like a noose.

He's found his rhythm. He delivers his last strikes quick and precise, rocking Kraglin forwards until his cheek is squashed against the post. The saltwater stinging his eyes and the condensation from his panting breath joins the spilled bodily fluids of every man who's knelt in his position in the past.

“Ten!” Yondu roars before Taserface gets the chance. He hurls the bloodied whip at his feet, the trailing end glancing off his shoulder. “Are ya fuckin' happy?”

Taserface says nothing. But he nods to Kraglin, who kneels with his overalls hanging like a half-shed skin, blood-slicked and clutching the handholds as if his hands have atrophied to their shape. Yondu stands between them, a furious blue barricade. He grits out an order: “Leave, all of ya! Now!”

Taserface is moving before he finishes the words. He's gotten what he's come for. Vaas lingers longest, while Tullk and Oblo are first through the door, eager to escape the oppressive stink of blood in the air and give their captain and mate some privacy. Her sneer twists her face into something better suited to a gargoyle. She prowls away with a final over-the-shoulder hiss.

Yondu waits until the hangar doors glide closed. Then he dials the captain's lock override into his wristpiece, and – as an afterthought – sets an opaque sheen across the forcefield that keeps the hangar's oxygen content where it belongs. Don't want any M-ship pilots getting an eyeful.

Then and only then does he pad to Kraglin, and tentatively crouch besides him.

“Hey,” he whispers. “S'over now. You still with me?”

Kraglin doesn't respond. But his fingers twitch on their handholds, curled into cramped claws.

Yondu sets to prying them loose, because that's easiest to solve. The raw lines carved through Kraglin's back hair? The clumps of dead and dangling skin? Those can be healed. However, the knowledge of what Yondu just did to him ain't so easy to sweep into the proverbial thruster-jet and burn to a crisp, like a Ravager being sent through the Gates.

So Yondu concentrates on Kraglin's hands. He catches long white fingers between his own, caging them in blue. Kraglin's knuckles are cold, but his palms are hot from friction, where they're rubbed on the holds. A wicked cut scythes over his left loveline. Not enough to put him out-of-action, or in any way comparable to the mess along his spine. But sore, nevertheless. He ain't gonna be shooting akimbo for some while.

That's okay. Yondu'll shoot everyone Kraglin wants dead before he gets the chance. That way, this ain't never gonna happen again.

“You ready for bandages?” he asks after a minute's passed, and Kraglin has done nothing but slump and let Yondu for all intents and purposes hold his hand. Can't have that.

Yondu tosses Kraglin's bloody palms back at him and stands in a furl of rippling leather. “Right. You sit tight, boy. I'll fetch 'em.”

He does so, taking longer than necessary winding and unwinding a boxer's glove between his fists. They both need a moment, and he ain't gonna draw attention to the way Kraglin's glowering at the ground and furiously blinking back moisture, not if he doesn't have to. He pauses halfway to him, then retraces his steps, hanging the washcloth and the bucket – that contains clean water, siphoned from a neighboring tank – over his arm.

“Here,” he says gruffly, squatting as Kraglin weakly pushes to sit. He's left his mark on the post – blood from his bitten lip and his blistered palms. The navy splatters cling to the rust. “Gimme yer hand.”

Kraglin does so. Yondu swirls the cloth over it, shushing him when he winces. He dunks it before wringing the blue-stained deluge over the drain. The post is situated right over one, so at least if anyone pisses themselves the mop team won't have too dire a job.

He won't touch his back. Not until Kraglin's ready for it. For now he makes do with wrapping the gauze around Kraglin's hand, winding it between his thumb and his palm, applying more pressure with each pass of the reel until his palm is bulked around its middle and he can't feel the damp soak of blood.

“There,” he mutters, finishing with a pat to Kraglin's knuckles. “Awright.” Then, because Kraglin's head is still drooping and his air's still leaving him in halting snatches - “S'over now, you hear me? S'done. You paid the price, like it's all laid out in the Code. And ya did good, boy. Ya did better'n any of them woulda done.” He forces a snigger, bursting like an acid bubble on his lips. “Remember when I had to whip Scrote after he tried doublin' his cut? Had to spread the ten out over two days cause he was blubbin' so much.”

A lenience his masters never showed a bawling child, too young to understand why he was being punished. Yondu quickly learned that screaming was a waste of breath.

But he remembers the shame of the aftermath, the pure hatred he'd distilled from the usual fug of obedience and lack-of-self. If he was in Kraglin's shoes, he wouldn't want to talk to the man who lashed him either.

Yondu's lungs close like he's been spaced. Ice crawls along every capillary, a creeping glacier whose terminus resides in his chest. It erodes further, eating soft tissues and freezing bone to brittle husks, for every moment that Kraglin refuses to look at him.

“Awright,” Yondu says again, rocking onto his feet. He blames his sharp intake of breath on the creak in his knees from kneeling too long.

That's another one of his promises broken – _never kneel, never apologize, never belong to another man._ Yondu supposes he can allow a sliver of an exception though, if only for Kraglin.

“I'll send Mijo in to sort out yer back.”

He could do it – he knows how. Hell, he's performed the sterilizing, swabbing and bandaging on himself more times than he cares to count, fingers shaking and slippery with his own dark blood. But Kraglin evidently doesn't want his hands on him. Yondu can't say he blames him.

Yondu stands upright, swaying only slightly. His gaze lumbers to the whip, and for a moment he imagines he sees it moving: a nightmare from his past, ready to rise up and strike him like a viper. But no. The whip ain't nothing without a man to move it. Yondu's still feels the handle's imprint, like a brand over the calluses on his palm.

He'll take the whip when he goes, he decides. It can live in his room for a bit. It's gonna haunt his sleep-cycles anyway, so what extra harm can it do, to keep it close? One thing's for certain: Kraglin doesn't deserve to suffer the reminder.

But when he makes to punch Mijo's comm button – it's on his equivalent of a speed dial: a button inlaid in the matrix of his watch and colored the same brilliant ruby as his implant – his hand is caught between bandaged walls. They cover the prints of the whip, and Yondu's fingers curl around them on automatic, like they had done around the smooth-worn handle.

The bulky bandages make Kraglin's grip as strong as that of a mitten-clad child. Yondu slips him easily. He saunters to the whip, stoops to grab it, and keeps walking without looking back.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thanks for every comment! Also, if you haven't yet done so, you should totally check out my next tumblr prompt fic, 'Punch-Ups and Lice and Everything Nice'. I'm having a lot of fun with it, and the next chapter will be along soon. Not long before I open up oneshot prompts again!**


	21. Keep Walking

Kraglin shows up next morning, as is protocol. He wears his jumpsuit stripped to his waist, and shivers at every blast from the vents. His bandages look grubby after a half-hour cycle on the Bridge.

Yondu assigns him a seated position. Recognizing the charity for what it is, Kraglin proves he can be just as stubborn as Yondu by having Peter take his place, and stalking around to assess everyone else's work.

Yondu's frustrated, until he realizes how meekly the Bridge crew are responding to the sharp-tongued interrogations. Kraglin finds fault with everything from generator optimization to scurvy-pill stocks, to the engine output that pootles them towards their shore-leave stop by the cycle.

It clicks then, that Kraglin ain't defying him out of spite. He's putting his injury to _use_.

It's pragmatism, plain and simple. Yondu's choice in first mate has always been a contention point. It would have been, whether he selected Taserface or Tullk. But Kraglin has a certain damp-eyed delicacy that looks like it ought to be easy to crush. This is a feat of strength: ignoring the help when it's provided, marching about with a grim scowl as if his spine ain't twinging whenever he takes a step.

Yondu would suspect he'd nicked a non-drowsy anesthetic on the sly – against the rules, although he wouldn't call him out on it. But he spots the swallowed flare of pain, which makes Kraglin's throat spasm and his eyes pop wide until he forces it back down.

He's proud of Kraglin, he tells himself. Not pissed that his mercy's been rejected. Kraglin is embracing the oldest and purest of Ravager values – self-sufficiency. Yondu ain't cruel enough to tempt him from it.

Although he wants to. It's a raw burn inside him, a hook that's lodged in his entrails, which tugs whenever he glimpses the idiot's neck tattoos. He wants to be the one to unwind the bandages, peeling away layer after layer of off-white cloth and crusty blood, until he finds the wounds he left on him; the mementos of both their crimes. He wants to hold Kraglin when the wrappings stick. Wants to soothe him, tuck his face to rest against the hollow of Yondu throat and hum so Kraglin can feel the reverberation as he peels the gauze away.

No gels allowed. Nothing to speed the healing process. A whipping is the most severe form of punishment on Yondu's ship, secondary only to the airlock. It's for Codebreakers, and Codebreakers alone. The pain ain't _supposed_ to be over in a single day. That would defy the point.

The crew need to know that Kraglin isn't getting off lightly. Judging by the way Kraglin fulfils his duties regardless of whether Yondu orders him to, he understands this. Maybe that's why he's avoiding Yondu too.

Next morning, Yondu waits for the other shower door to creak open before ambushing Kraglin in the one private space they have no choice but to share. He ignores the mortification of catching him on the shitter, glares furiously at the far wall and asks whether Kraglin _wants_ him to treat him as normal.

The answer is a resolute yes (“an' please shut the door after ya, sir...”)

He sees the sense in it. It staves off any accusations of softness on Yondu's part, and it makes Kraglin look more badass to boot. Vaas watches him march Kraglin from one side of the Bridge to the nav-deck, then back to him to report. She doesn't find any misconduct to pull them up on.

Judging by his glower, Quill doesn't approve. But the boy ain't never been _au fait_ with the Ravager way of life. A perspective shift keeps him and Yondu forever a beat out of sync. What looks to him like abuse is to Yondu and Kraglin a conspiracy. The pair of them work together, to prove the first mate's edges ain't been sandpapered by his ordeal at the captain's hands.

Yondu has him go fetch their rations when the shift grinds to a close. He sends a gaggle of other crewmates along in accompaniment, to make sure Kraglin doesn't limp. He doesn't expect Kraglin to loiter about after his errand is run. But Kraglin stays, and Yondu doesn't order him otherwise.

He delivers one steaming bowl to Yondu's lap. The other resides on a tray, which Kraglin balances between his bandaged paws. He and Yondu man the skeleton shift together, Kraglin at-ease with his back straighter than a fuel rod, Yondu slouched low in his chair. He gulps until the last of the food has slithered through his gullet, and blames the weight in his belly on mystery meat.

He doesn't try to start conversation. Neither does Kraglin. They just exist, sharing space side-by-side, and watch the constellations wheel through hyperspace.

 

* * *

 

They make port a whole Xandarian Lunar-cycle later. After everything – the water tank, the whipping, the weeks that followed where Kraglin wore his flagellation-scars with his chin in the air and a gaze that extended for a thousand kliks in whichever direction he looked – they could use a break. That's a polite euphemism. Ravager slang for: every man aboard is in need of a good hard fuck.

Kraglin's back sealed fast. That's courtesy of his Hraxian blood, but also the quality of their medbay stock. Yondu visited Mijo after-hours and told her in no uncertain terms what she'd be facing if she let his brightest and best die from blood infection. The guy might not have been allowed painkillers, or healing aids, but at the very least, Mijo keeps his wounds sterile. The results are exemplary. Kraglin makes his customary roll of the shoulders, like he's limbering up for the work-out to come. He only winces once.

He's grinning, bright and fierce. Yondu knows he'll be on the lookout for a blue boy who doesn't mind bruises.

The rest of the crew are in a similar mood. They've been working double-time to make up for the new drain on their cash flow, courtesy of Stakar. There's barely been enough hours between robbing merchants and holding up cruise ships to refuel, let alone for Yondu to treat the men to downtime. Plus, there's that snippet of information Stakar revealed at their rendezvous – _the Kree have a new price on your head, Udonta, and there's them who are willing to collect_.

Yondu can't be asked to flick through the bounty books. Doesn't matter to him what the pricks from the Higher Kree Administration claim he's worth. Numbers are meaningless - he knows he's priceless.

But he's heard whispers among his men. Whispers in the region of another two-fifty K on top of his sweet half-mil. Alive, of course – the Kree like to administer their own tortures. Really, if he were playing it safe, they wouldn't dock at all.

Yondu ain't never _played it safe_. Not in all his life.

And so, here they are. Back on Dizerall. Blue sky for miles. Beach a tinted peach, sand sifting between their toes. Sun on Yondu's neck, warming it past the point of 'sweaty' and into 'slow-roasting' territory. The collar of his underjacket and the ever present scarf are being treated to a slow saturation, wilting like desert flowers after rain.

Like hell is he stripping down though. Not when there are strangers about. Too many questions, too many prods of the bone chits that jut from the knobbles of his spine, too many fingers to wrench from their sockets or whistle off completely...

Quill, already bare to his pants, shoots him a disbelieving look. They ain't talked much since the whipping incident, but the boy's heart has always been far too large for his chest. Even when he's mad at Yondu, he can't stop himself caring.

“You're gonna get heatstroke, boss.”

“Counting on it.” That'd give him an excuse for the nausea as Kraglin scampers off, eager to dip his dick in blue and forget all about the captain who pinned him to a post and lashed him like a cur.

Yondu locates a rare patch of shade. It's full, of course – teeming with smugglers and mercs, whose species suffer in these torrid climes. They're fanning themselves and breathing heavily through flared nostrils. As Yondu approaches, most risk the sunlight.

One, however, ain't put off by the advance of a louring Ravager.

“Long time no see,” drawls Kree-guy. Yondu plonks down in the sand. He leans his back against a palm tree, shuts his eyes and ignores him.

The tactic doesn't work on irritating Terrans. Really, it has no prayer against big blue a-holes. Sure enough, next moment sand grains crunch. There's a grunt and a settling 'oof'. The Kree lowers himself down the trunk besides him.

Yondu cracks an eye. “You injured?” If the guy's bleeding out, the least he could do would be to shuffle away so Yondu won't have to smell him when he croaks. But the Kree's hand is pressed to his shoulder, not over any vital organs (although Kree biology's a bit odd. Had the shot pierced a few inches lower and several to the left, it would have hit his liver.) Yondu's butchered enough of his kind to know that the wound won't be fatal. While he regrets asking the moment the words leave his mouth, there ain't no shoving them back again.

“Had a run-in with some old friends from the homeworld.” The Kree's smirk indicates which of them emerged the victor. “You're not the only one they're gunning for.”

If he's trying to make small talk he's shit at it; if he's trying to lull Yondu into feeling some smatterings of comradely affection for him, he's worse. Yondu grunts. He basks behind the cool navy backs of his eyelids. “What'd ya do?”

“Oh, nothing much.” He's talking with that faux-casual way that means he's about to drop a bombshell. Yondu suffers the dramatic pause in unimpressed silence. “Just murdered an Accuser or three.”

Been there, done that. Yondu yawns. “Preachin' to the stars-damned Celestial choir. Look – I'm here waitin' on a contract. Business, not pleasure.” Lie. The last swindling toad had been a fluke; they ain't had commerce from Dizerall in a very long time. “You got anyone else to bug?”

“That's a real shame.” Kree-guy's smirking, he can _feel_ it. “You're fun to tease.”

The sudden tension in Yondu's shoulders is visible through his sweaty jacket. “I'm damn good at killin' Kree too, so if ya don't -”

“Cap'n?”

Oh yeah. He ain't alone. Quill saunters up, smile wolfish for someone who's still fifty percent puppy-fat. “You gonna introduce me to your _friend_?”

He doesn't have the patience to deal with this. “No.”

“Well, that's rude. Guess I'll do it myself. Hi!” At least Quill casts a more solid shadow than the palm leaves. He stops in front of Yondu and the Kree and holds out a hand to the latter.

The Kree eyes it. He checks on Yondu to ensure that he ain't gonna gut him for laying hands on the brat – tempting, but Yondu's too hot to act on his temper, even if it it's triggered by a finer hair than usual. He takes the hand, careful and slow. When Quill shakes it he shakes back, gentle so as not to crush his fragile Terran bones.

“Hello, child.” Peter's smile instantly sours. The Kree amends himself with his next sentence though, treating Quill to another delicate pump. “You must be captain Udonta's first mate.”

There. Puffed him up nicely. Yondu'd be impressed if he could stop himself yawning – the heat, the sunlight, the shade, all contribute to a drowsy state of ennui. He snorts to himself as Peter explains:

“Nah, that's Kraglin's job. I'm more a -”

“Mascot.”

Quill shoots him a look better reserved for enemies on the battlefield. _“Protege,_ was gonna say.”

“Nope, definitely mascot.”

“You are too harsh on the boy, I think!” The Kree laughs, big and gutsy. He makes to treat Yondu to a jovial elbowing, and stops himself just in time. “He will be a fine warrior, one day. And what of this... _Kraglin?_ ”

Oh no. He's sniffing for information. This ain't no admittance of interest, or even a coincidence borne from the pair of them being in the same place at one time. He's after something. Whether it's the location of their prey, or weaknesses to exploit, he's sensed blood in the water. Now he's circling closer, wanting to wrench what miserable jobs they can get from under their noses.

It's like stealing food from a starving man. Quill's dumb enough to hand it over on a plate. Yondu pushes to his feet.

“C'mon brat,” he says, cuffing his curly head. “Time we met our client.”

“What cl-”

“Shaddup.”

“Hm.” The Kree doesn't seem surprised – only a little disappointed. “I'll catch you later, then.”

He sounds worryingly confident about that. Yondu doesn't bother replying – his 'later' is fully booked at the ro-brothel on the town's edge. If he's lucky, he'll make it through the session without thinking of Kraglin.

He steers Peter away. The Kree washes from his mind like Kraglin's blood. He'd sluiced that down the drain after Mijo collected her patient, aiming the powerhose and blasting again and again, concentrated gouts like he was putting out a fire, battering the old post clean for the first time that decade.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Who remembers Kree-guy?**  
>  Comments & Kudos = greatly appreciated!


	22. Fingers in Holes

He strolls to the counter and greets the madame with a grin that's designed to be friendly rather than intimidating. Those aren't well-practised; he doesn't make a very good job of it. He's a regular though, so she smiles back - and as her oily green lips peel from her oily green teeth, Yondu realizes the flaw in his plan.

Every hooker-joint from here to Knowhere has his preferences on tap. These preferences are, in order: no automated sweet nothings, no freaky attachments (at least, not down below) and no taking the lead. So, in short, the precise opposite of what Yondu's after.

With the exception of the sweet nothings. He can always live without those.  

And so, when she says “the usual?” with an enquiring nod at a perky Kylorian-model in a display case, he has to shake his head. The madame's eyebrows crank up her forehead. She's wearing so much foundation that it cracks around the folds. But she shows no further surprise, shifting to her datapad and summoning the stocklist with a professional nod. The binary-sexed female stocklist, that is – which admittedly includes a lot more variation than anyone from a planetbound species might expect. Approximately half the higher life-forms in this quadrant are mammalian, let alone upright-walking. But the madame knows him, and she refines the search with a tap of her stylus.

Girls with inwards-facing genitalia as opposed to ovipositors. Dammit. Yondu ain't got the guts to ask for a wider pool of choice – not when that'll be logged on his records for anyone with basic hack-skills to see. Not when he ain't yet certain he wants this.

He sighs, selecting at random. His finger winds up hovering over the face of a purple-scaled chick. There. Let her think he's besotted with some reptilian lass, searching for a lookalike hole.

“Can ya make her non-learning?”

There go the eyebrows again. “We can always remove the intelligence-collecting chip. But she will only obey direct commands. No initiative.”

“S'fine by me.” The thought of someone taking _initiative_ when they've got fingers buried in his ass ain't a reassuring one – at least, not yet. Yondu'll see how this goes before thinking any further on the subject. That's a promise he made himself this morning, when he woke up to a second set of sheets that, while not ruined, had certainly come close. As had he, while moaning Kraglin's name loud enough to wake himself up.

Evidently, he tells himself, it's physical. Ain't nothing strange about it. Sex is about pleasure. This whole business with Kraglin has simply _broadened his awareness_. He's got a prostate – might as well use it. If he can get off with a bot-hooker's digits crammed into him (he can't quite reach, not that he's checked, _obviously;_ or at least only after a radiation leak, and that was to make sure there weren't no tumors) he can keep on living his life with a few tweaks to his preferences on the interstellar brothel database. No need to bother Kraglin at all.

Especially not since Yondu'd, y'know, out and out rejected him. Told him they were never gonna happen. Then crawled on his lap and kissed him for a job, and _then_ whipped him bloody and walked away.

The lash coils in the corner of his cabin, back aboard the _Eclector_. Yondu likes to pretend that if it's haunting him after-hours, that means it ain't haunting Kraglin.

But anyway, the point is that Yondu turned Kraglin down. Yondu never goes back on his word. Or he does, but not if pride and reputation are at stake - not even when he really, really wants to.

“She also,” warns the madame, activating the claw that will collect Yondu's squeeze from her box in the warehouse and deliver her via pneumatic tube, “won't notice if she hurts you. Although she will of course, stop at a word – what's your usual one?”

“Uh. 'Stop', I guess.” He shrugs at her incredulous look _._ “Ain't into that whole 'no means yes' shit.”

“Hm.” She's wise enough not to probe. Ain't Yondu's fault that he didn't have the average sexual development – jabbed with dampening hormones as soon as his balls dropped, to keep him from breeding up any other compatible species in the slave pens, then knocked unconscious and milked for spunk whenever they wanted to make more of his kind. Once Stakar'd introduced him to the simple pleasure of a silicone cunt, he ain't had cause to go back.

The woman eyes him up and down, her gaze snagging on the flame. “It's better to choose something that can't be mistaken in pleasure. How about... 'Pirate'?”

“Don't see why I'd be sayin' 'stop' at all if I was having fun,” Yondu complains. But he doesn't argue – mostly because the vacuum-tube behind the reception desk makes a promising slurp.

When his lass steps out, Yondu's first thought is repulsion. She's short and scaly and neon lilac, and her eyes are black as pitch. Her neck-motors click audibly as she raises her head, and the Madame tuts, fiddling in her waist-belt for oil. “Let me get that for you, before your time slot starts. Don't want her to be creaking and grinding the whole way through.”

Yondu takes the time to assess the girl's hands, as the madame cranks her off-switch and prises open the panel on the back of her neck with the aid of a portable multitool. Her fingers are perfectly formed, long and slim and regular. Kraglin's are knucklier, and hairier to boot. But it ain't like he's gonna be looking at her while she's feeding them into him from behind...

Suddenly, he can't wait to get going. “Hurry it up,” he snaps at the Madame, who clicks the panel back into place and boots her up again. “I gotta job to finish, y'know.”

Yondu frequents few bordellos, thanks to Stakar. The bastard visits 'em all after him, Yondu swears, and shuts off their commerce one at a time in an effort to blue-balls him out of the game.

Well, Yondu's balls are naturally azure. Stakar can coerce as many upright-establishments not to serve him as he likes – there'll always be places like this, places that fell from Ogord's graces long before Yondu's time (a bot programmed to garrote a redcoat in the night, the occasional real chick who got smuggled in off the streets and was kept chained and spread-eagled in the basement until she stopped trying to escape). The madame ain't serviced the other ninety-nine in decades, and her brothel will nurse that grudge for centuries after Yondu's death.

The girl's lack of a memory chip means that she can't relay every new precedent he's set to the whorehouse network. Yondu wonders how much of this conversation the Madame is noting in the bot's stead. He expects to hear rumors about how the fallen Ravager captain is head-over-heels for a purple lizard-chick by the end of the week. There'll be three claims of bastards and a tearful plea for child support before the month's out – but outwardly at least, the woman is professional.

“Very well, Udonta. Here's your time card.”

She slots the glimmering slice of hologlass into his palm. His custom is valuable; she doesn't mention how much it's sweating.

 

* * *

 

No memory chip means no conversation. Yondu's fine with that. He usually makes bots stay silent anyway, not even a moan to simulate orgasm. They're toys, in his opinion, and they should act like them. There ain't no way to make an AI a perfect replica of an interactive being. Not without making it... well, a sentient interactive being. While this institution caters to that taste, Yondu professes a certain amount of discomfort. You don't build a pussy to fuck, then give it a brain. That's just cruel.

Although it ain't the pussy he's interested in. Not today.

“I want ya,” he says, slow and punctuated, looking direct at her lifeless eyes. “To stick yer finger up my ass.”

She presents the digit. Her skin's textured, like a sheet of purple styrofoam glued around a  frame. Ain't nothing between her lashes but hand-painted shine.

But when Yondu looses his belt, toes off his boots, and perches on the edge of the bed, she has an inkling of what to do. Falling back on pre-programming – that's gotta be it. It makes him relieved, in some small way, that he ain't the only customer who requests this service from a pretty lady.

“C'mon then, darlin',” he says, hoarse though they ain't yet begun. He's feigning confidence, not that it's necessary. He's safe here. He's got his word – _pirate._ There ain't no mind to judge him, except his own.

But parting his legs, scooping his balls and the treacherous half-hard curve of his cock from her path... It makes his pulse stutter from the sheer _vulnerability_ of it. And not necessarily in a bad way. Fuck.

“Wet it a bit first,” he croaks, when she aims that outstretched pointer with a machine's unerring accuracy. Even if he ain't laid with no one who's not all circuitry on the inside, most bot-hookers come with the standard cunt, ass, and mouth. He's experimented with all three, and if diving in dry chafes for the giver it's gotta be worse on the receiving end.

Because that's where he's gonna be. On the receiving end. Yup.

And it'd be really nice if his guts could stop fluttering like he ate an entire A'askavarian curry. That's either panic or the forewarning signs of diarrhoea, and right now he's not sure which he'd prefer.

The bot-hooker wiggles her fingertip, demonstrative. It's already glistening. Self-lubricating skin; no wonder her price tag was extortionate.

Yondu inhales. Yondu exhales. Yondu scolds himself for getting het up – and scolds his cock for bobbing before it's had the slightest brush of stimulation. Slick tips his belly with every shaky breath. She won't start until he says so – which means he has to take the initiative. Take _control._

Yondu hooks one hand under each meaty thigh, and hauls himself open.

He's as hairless down below as he is everywhere else but his chin. The crack of his ass makes an unmistakable navy landing strip. And it's good – it's very, _very_ good; and while Yondu jerks himself off from pure force of habit, he's harboring this elated suspicion that the extra stimulation ain't required. But...

There's something missing.

Yondu peels his eyes open, gasping. He thumbs the white smear off the bot-hooker's cheek. For a moment, he can almost pretend he feels stubble. But no – there's only artificially sleek skin-substitute, and a plastic facsimile of a smile.

She ain't _real._ That's what she's lacking. As well as a certain anatomical feature that Yondu's spent far too long trying to convince himself he ain't attracted to (and for no discernible reason, as Half-nut's dead and Yondu ain't never stacked two unit chits by that _reproductive sex only_ shite).

She ain't real, and she sure as hell ain't Kraglin. But Yondu's doing his best not to think about that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Will edit in morning :yawns:**


	23. Too Hot (Hot Damn)

Stepping onto the street is like opening a furnace. Heat radiates from the buildings, from the sand that crunches under Yondu's boot soles, from the blazing fireball that fills the bonny blue sky. Yondu's dark top is an oven; it suckles on light, making his leathers scalding to the touch. They roast the man within, surer than a meat hock wrapped in foil on a barbeque.

He groans, flapping the material that sticks to his pouchskin. The hot, gritty air brings no relief. Yondu scratches his sweat rings as he trudges along the Dizerall high street, ignoring the hollers of street vendors, the heaving cranes at the rudimentary unloading port, the miscellany of stenches from deep-fried food stalls and dung.

Great. Now he's got sand caught behind the staples that seal his pouch. If he gets another infection, he's gonna slaughter every Kree in the galaxy, and _slowly._

A fly lands on his shoulder. He swears he hears it sizzle, before it buzzes off to cooler pastures. This is a pleasure stop – much needed after a month prowling the hunting lanes. But believe it or not, Yondu's found them a job. Ain't nothing fancy – you wouldn't expect it from a deal struck in a cathouse lobby. There's cargo to be loaded, a destination to be reached, and cargo to be offloaded again.

It's beneath their caliber, but beggars can't afford to be choosers. Pariahs from the Ogord clans can afford even less than that.

So far, Yondu has handled everything but the heavy lifting. He's pinged the details to Tullk and Oblo, and other such reliable members of his crew who ain't likely to be shitfaced before noon. He trusts them them to corral the boys into a sleepy and soused production line.

He ought to make a token show of himself. Stop their fingers getting sticky. Especially considering the nature of what they're shipping. Blood-diamonds are adamantine-lustrous, small chits of starlight mined from the scattered outskirts of a supernova. Their buyer is a mob boss of some sort, and Yondu knows profits will be used to furnish the illegal arms trade, letting the guerrilla armies on both sides of the Xandar-Kree war potshot one another with greater accuracy.

Maybe, once upon a lifetime, he'd have cared. Ravagers have their codes, after all. But as Stakar likes to remind him, Yondu's a Ravager in name and flame alone. He ain't got no conscience to worry about.

After filching a greasy doughball off a stall and emptying the sand from his boots, Yondu takes a much-needed sojourn from the high street. He turns into the domestic quarter: a grid of intersecting slum-alleys that radiate out from the loading bays, straggling together like untrimmed pubes. He needs a breather – a five minute stretch where he ain't being slow-roasted. He won't be so quick to threaten Quill with cooking in future. If this is karma, it's sweaty and nauseous and entirely working.

He swaggers – more of an excuse to exaggerate his stride, untacking sticky leather from his skin. He winds up rolling his hips into the motion. It's to work out his wedgie, of course. Not so lube slithers between his asscheeks, slicker than the gritty concoction of sand and sweat that coats him like de-icing salt in a Contraxia gully.

In hindsight, he should've capitalized on the brothel's shower facilities. However, the Yondu of one hour hence had figured it would rub away of its own accord, rather than dribbling out of him, wet and thick, sixty revolutions of the chronometer later. It's as he's considering nipping down to the beach front and seeing if a good bowel-squeeze will clear it, that his attention is lured by the quaver of young Quill's mid-pubescent pipes.

“Don't you got a tracker on him? I though you had a tracker on him!”

“The tracker's on _you,_ idjit. Cause he likes it when ya follow him around like a yappin' Orloni-pup. Check yer left pocket.”

Yondu hikes a brow, unsure whether to be impressed at Kraglin's ingenuity or pissed that his first mate is acting on such an erroneous assumption. He doesn't _encourage_ Quill to bounce at his heels and tug on his sleeves and try to get him to join in as he yodels along to his Terran tunes. He _tolerates_ it. There's a difference.

“So if I'm not with him, we don't know where he is?” A gasp. “Krags, we gotta find him! I ain't seen him since last night! This could be serious!”

“It's just a rumor – c'mon, he'll be pissed if we interrupt him. Boss can look after himself.”

Yondu's gratified to note that Kraglin's defending his self-sufficiency. What from though? Yondu's been here a whole day-and-a-half. Ain't no one tried to stick more than a finger in him – that at his own request.

Yondu doesn't storm up to them and demand they recite every part of the conversation he missed. There ain't no better way to clam a man up, or to make him parse the information so you peep at his story through a carefully constructed viewhole. Better let them reveal it in their own time.

Yondu doubles back. He props himself against the nearest hovel. The structures - too ramshackle for houses, too perennial for tents – are airy and thin-walled. They're built from a combination of spliced palm trees and the occasional leafy frond, no windows where a gap will suffice.

The more high-class establishments – if anything on this rock can be called that – have built-in air conditioning, plus several refrigeration units in their attics which blast chilled air in keen, Siberian nips. The whorehouse to which Yondu had afforded patronage was one such place. But here, off the main road, where custom depends on ships that have stopped off for refuel, everything is as mutable as the clientele. Yondu swears a few of these pop-up stops weren't here when he passed by in the morning.

The dehydrated space-food store he's downwind from is a prime example. Vernacular architecture at its finest. It's been built so the breeze can gust through it from any angle: all steam-bent wood and breezeblocks. It must require constant sweeping, given the fine sand that's lifted and deposited in Yondu's airways whenever he draws breath.

He resists the urge to cough. He loiters there, stifling his yawn, and occasionally checks his chronometer so he appears occupied to passers by.

“He should still _know,_ ” Quill argues. “I'm gonna comm him right now, in fact.”

Shit. No time to flick the mute-switch. Peter jumps when he pokes the button and the answering tone blares from not six feet behind him. He clonks his noggin on the nearest wall, which is satisfactory enough. Yondu strides out, smirk a yellow sickle-slice. “Well, howdy boys. What'chu doin'?”

“Nothing!” squeaks Quill. He's drawing on past-precedent: a lifetime spent acting innocent when caught by anyone from captain to Nova Corpsman. It takes a whole thirty seconds for him to realize he's been lobbying to tell Yondu about whatever market gossip they'd overheard, and that therefore, this works in his favor. He side-eyes Kraglin to make sure he's not gonna get an elbow for his troubles. After Kraglin sighs and gestures for him to get on with it, he gabbles everything in a rush. “We-saw-a-wanted-poster-for-you-and-it-had-a-lot-of-money-on-it-and-I-don't-think-you-should-be-walking-around-alone.”

The kid's _worried._ About _him._ Yondu shoots Kraglin a wink. “Adorable, ain't he.”

Kraglin stands stiff. You'd have to be looking to notice, but Yondu is looking, and he does. Must be the whip scars – they're healed, but they've stretched the skin on his back to compensate, as if he's nabbed botox injections from Nova Prime, arranged 'em needle-up, and sprawled out across them like a fakir on his bed. “Well, I _told_ him you can whistle through a Kree battalion in point-five nanoseconds sir. Damn brat wouldn't listen to me.”

“Huh.” Yondu feigns a sniff. “Should I be pissed that you weren't runnin' to my rescue, Obfonteri?” It's banter. Obviously, he's delighted that Kraglin respects his ability to hold his own in battle. _Obviously._

Kraglin treats him to one of his more delicate smiles. It ain't brittle, not like a harsh word will shatter it permanent-like. But there's a fragility there that Yondu ain't got the first clue how to fortify. “No sir. Look, a million units is a lot for one man -”

“A million?” He's broken six figures? Yondu fistpumps. “Fuck yeah!”

“Boss,” Quill whinges, tugging on his sleeve. He pulls a face at how moist it is. Sweat leaks through the seams of the leather like Yondu is an antique engine valve, ready to pop and spatter corrosive fuel over everyone within a ten meter radius. “A million units means a million people who wanna kill you. You've got to be careful.” Pause. “And serious, take off your shirt. You look ready to melt.”

He feels it too. But hell, if he doesn't want Quill watching his back, he wants him laying eyes on that back less still. 

“Nah,” he says breezily. “I spent everythin' on whores, so it ain't like I can afford a sauna. This's the next best thing.”

“Gross,” Quill says – to the latter more than the former; he looks jealous about that. “I'mma go find water. And I'm bringing some back for you, captain. If you keep screwing girls and sweating, you'll wither like a flower.”

Yondu makes to tell him that he ain't no _flower._ If anything, he's a weed; tough, hardy, damn near impossible to kill. He soon sees the folly of it. He _is_ pretty parched (ain't surprising; he's designed for a rainforest planet, not a desert). The artificial air-scrubbers on the _Eclector_ are cruel enough to his skin, leaving him peeling on especially arid days. But at least the _Eclector_ ain't dry _and_ hot. He'll be frizzled like the rind on a slice of Orloni-rump if he doesn't get some liquids in him pronto. And hey – if Quill's running errands of his own free will, far be it from Yondu to complain.

The kid's not done though. Lower lip jutted out, he marches to Yondu – ballsy – and glares him in the eye while he shoves the tracking bead in his pants pocket. “Don't destroy it,” he says. “I'll know.”

His vocal cords twang like snapped guitar strings. From a spotty sixteen year old, his officious tone is more amusing than offensive. Yondu smirks until he loses his nerve and darts off into the market. The seller at the cal-cube store, the only sentient close enough to eavesdrop, makes a show out of counting his unit chits. Yondu ignores him. Ports are hives for tales both tall and otherwise. Any rumor will be twisted and diluted, fed through the vortex of the market only to emerge on the other side warped as a fender after a miscalculated jump.

“Scratch water,” he tells Kraglin, wringing out his collar. “I need somethin' stronger. Where's the nearest joint of yers? Let's have us a party.”

Kraglin, like Quill, has stripped to his boots and threadbare pants. His bare ribcage looks barrelled, compared to the greyhound-tuck of his abdomen underneath. The undersides of his forearms, where the hair is sparse rather than grizzly, look impossibly soft to the touch.

Yondu'd like to test that. And do a whole lot more – a fact he can no longer deny. If he got a few drinks in him – who knew. He might work up the guts to renege on all his protests and denials and...

Kraglin points to the street next door. As luck would have it, there's a sign visible past the hirsute flank of a haulage-ox. Yondu watches the caravan pass: big mellow beasts of burden, whose velvety noses Peter loved to feel woffling through his hair when he was a child. Kraglin snaps him from his reminiscence.

“Sorry sir – I really oughta head back to ship.”

Jealousy flares. “Why? You meetin' someone?”

“No. Just... Last I saw, Taserface had ahold of that bounty poster. He's on break now, so he'll be boozin' it up, and I kinda want to burn it before he gets back.”

“Hm.” 'Thanks' ain't a word Yondu spouts often. But he thinks it, and Kraglin must catch a glimmer of it on his face, because his smile wriggles like a happy lamprey and his ears tint pink. The rest of his face follows, when Yondu pats his whiskers with a sly grin. “Mighty fine sunburn you got here.”

“Sunburn,” Kraglin chokes. “Yep. Yep, thassit exactly. O-off you go, sir. Have fun. Only – hey, wait. Didn't'chu tell Peter you didn't have no units?”

Yondu draws away with a parting snigger, chipped nails latching onto Kraglin's beard hairs. He takes a few bristles along for the journey. It ain't as romantic as a hair lock, but by Ravager standards, close enough. “So?”

Kraglin rubs his fresh-plucked jaw. “So, cap'n, how you gonna buy drinks?”

“Who said I was gonna be doin' the buyin'?” He says it with the full intention of making Kraglin's mug go constipated. The whiplash of hurt he gets ain't nearly so enjoyable. “What?”

“Jus' rememberin' what happened when I offered, sir.” Yondu wigging out and treating him like a beetle upended from his boot for a week. Yeah. If Yondu was the sort of guy to harbor regrets, he might have a few simmering over his brain's gas-hob, courtesy of that.

 _Perhaps,_ he thinks to himself, _you oughta wait until he's free, and head to a bar together. Just to catch up. That's all._

He knows now, sure as the trickle of lube down the inside of his sweat-slippery thigh, that Kraglin would say yes. So what stops him? Fear of the unknown? That unknown ain't so much a mystery any more. But there's still the threat of the crew finding out, let alone the emotional fall-out from sleeping, for the first time in his life, with someone he gives more than a blasé wave about.

Stars. If they follow through, if Yondu gets caught up in the moment...

He might tell Kraglin he _loves him,_ or something stupid like that.

Best he come to terms with the sensation of sex before he tries to make a move on Kraglin. Especially seeing as it ain't been a moon-cycle since he gave him the most resolute rejection in the poor guy's life – after grinding his ass on him for months, in an attempt to cudgel the wants of his body into his brain.

Because Yondu's grown, you see. He's _matured._ He can acknowledge that he likes Kraglin. A lot. In _that_ way. But by denying it so long, and flip-flopping back and forth, there's a fair chance he's stomped his chances down into the mud. It'll take more than a round in the sack to dredge 'em out again. If he wants to forge something steady with his first mate, he's gotta take it slow.

Or maybe that's just pride talking. Ain't no man who likes undercutting themselves. While Yondu's a self-proclaimed untrustworthy git, he never envisioned himself as one for acting hot and cold.

Kraglin deserves better. Kraglin deserves to be told outright what Yondu wants – him, bending his captain over his seat on Bridge like he'd pinned that pretty blue lad to his bed; long fingers settled on his hips, dipping under to weigh his pouch and his cock as Kraglin kisses behind his ear, whiskers tickling his neck, lines up, pushes _in..._

“Sir? Sir, are you alright?” Kraglin's waving in front of his face. Unlike in Yondu's fantasies, it's not so he can suck on his fingers. “Sir, seriously, I think you're too hot.”

Yondu sniggers. Kraglin rolls his eyes.

“Mature as ever, boss. Now I know you don't want no one to see, but ya should really take off yer shirt -”

Or go somewhere with artificial cooling. Somewhere like a bar. Yondu pushes off the wall he'd collapsed against when his bloodflow found itself too thinned to divert to his dick and brain simultaneously. He tests his cheeks on the backs of his hands. Ain't much temperature difference, far as he can tell – although when Kraglin tries he jerks back with a yelp, much like the earlier bluebottle.

“Okay, yeah, yer overheated -”

Best not mention the other reason he's flushed. “I'm goin' already. Bar'll have a temp-gauge, right?”

Kraglin nods, although he don't look happy about it. But while he wrings his lanky hands and dithers in that alleyway until Yondu makes his lurching passage into the foyer, he doesn't follow, and Yondu won't order him to.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Another morning edit job I think.... #toosleepy Comments = love!**


	24. The Least Dramatic Bar Fight

First thing he notices about the bar: it's cool.

Second: it's dark.

Third is the three-dimensional snapshot of his mug revolving behind the counter.

Power grid is practically non-existent here. Ain't no plasma-infrastructure, nothing that could flash up on a Nova sensor. As a result, his photonic twin is the centerpiece of a bouquet, twenty faces projected from a single crystal, scratchy and zapping from dust-interference.

The likeness might be hazy, but it's unmistakable. Eyes flick to him, then his picture, then away again, in quick succession like they're following Orloni around a bait ring.

Kree-guy's peepers are among them. Unlike the others, once they've journeyed to Yondu they fix there. They're of a hue with amethysts, and the more inventive flavors of moonshine. Yondu might smell a rat, if Kree-guy didn't look surprised to see him.

He shunts out his stool, leaving the bartender he'd been chatting up hanging. “Uh, hi. Kinda figured you'd have split town by now, what with the...” He gestures at poster-Yondu, who's a few years younger but no less ornery.

Yondu emulates the expression. He stalks past him, glaring straight ahead. He's got squared shoulders and a thousand-mile stare, and he walks like a man on a mission – because, in his long-ish experience, he's discovered that's the best way to Get Shit Done. If that shit involves finding a man to take his stars-damned anal virginity, why should that be any different?

Kree-guy falls into step besides him. His legs are longer than Yondu's; he takes shorter strides to compensate, mag-boots clumping quick-time. A regular spacer then, and one used to low-calibre crafts, where malfunctions in the gravimetrics department are commonplace. Who knows – he might be as down-on-his-luck as Yondu.

Maybe he's looking to make some mint on the side. Yondu is loath to take advice from a Terran pipsqueak, but he can't help but recall Peter's words: _a million units means a million people who want you dead._

“Don't bother with the drink-buyin',” he growls. “I'm after someone I ain't never gonna see again, and yer like a bad unit-chit.”

“Keep turning up?”

“You goddit.”

“Huh.”

The club's bored into the sands like a sandsnake burrow. Just as with the brothel, it's larger on the inside. They amble around the spacious dome, tolerating the yodels of the latest Xandarian teenybopper to win an extraterrestrial broadcast license, until Yondu can't ignore the glaringly obvious for one second longer. “Yer still here,” he grits.

The Kree chuckles, thumbs hooked in his gun belt. “Observant. I like it.”

“Why.”

Kree-guy smirks. He's got balls on him, for someone whose race is minus several scions thanks to Yondu and his arrow. “Because I reckon it'll take you three more steps to realize that you don't want rumors of your preferences getting out and about. Still a lot of prejudice in this corner of the galaxy – all that pro-Evolutionist nonsense. Might cost you contracts, and all.”

“You'd know all about Evolutionist nonsense, huh.” Yondu ain't got his duster – just a sweat-sodden jacket and an arrow, batting on his hip every time his right leg swings forward. “Y'all're Kree. S'all you care about: breedin' the strongest.”

“Oh? Is that what you were? _The strongest_?”

Yondu stops.

He'd been bee-lining for the dancefloor with the full intent of grabbing the nearest randy, propositioning him, dragging him to the bathroom and sitting on his cock. However, having ascertained his trajectory, the dancers scatter. Torrid breeze from outside collides with the cool club air, forming an artificial warm front besides the swinging door. Yondu gives no shits. They ain't who he wants, at the end of the day. Not one of 'em – not the pretty half-Kree barkeep, or his full-blooded friend. Ain't no rake-thin Hraxians here - or at least, none with a freaky snake-dick and wet blue eyes and a back that bears the same slash-marks as Yondu's.

But as for Kree-guy's jibe... Yondu clenches and unclenches his fist, ligaments tight as an airlock seal.

“Aw hell.” The Kree raises broad blue hands. “That wasn't a nice thing to say. Must be more tipsy than I thought. I'm sorry. It won't happen again.”

Damn right it won't, because Yondu oughta kill him now. And yet the Kree's got a puckered half-smile nibbling one side of his face, nervy as Kraglin's. 

Kree-guy swallows. He scopes the Ravager glowering up at him, flame on his chest and rage in his eyes. He doesn't retreat, but he shuffles half a step rearwards before halting again, giving Yondu space.

“I know my kind have bounties on you that make the heads I hunt look cheaper than bot-hookers on Skaldor. And I know what those bounties are for. But talking about it? That's, uh. _Insensitive_ , or something. I shouldn't have said shit.”

 _Damn right,_ Yondu wants to say. What comes out - “I ain't _sensitive_!” is far too petulant for his liking.

There's that wry smile again. How can it remind him so much of his first mate, when the face it's mounted on hovers a whole foot above Kraglin's, and is a shade darker than Yondu's own? He ain't drained his first bottle yet; he has no excuse for whisky-goggles. "I'm just saying that it's a lot safer to let someone you trust treat you to a drink.”

Yondu thins his mouth. “I don't trust you.”

Kree shrugs. “Trust that I know that then, and I'm not suicidal enough to upset you.”

“Huh. Why're ya so... ten...?”

“Tenacious?”

“That! Whas so special about me?”

“Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

Flattery. It'll get most folks anywhere. Yondu ain't so quick to charm. “Per'aps you ain't noticed,” he says, collar sweat-glued over the brands on his neck, “but I don't much like yer kind.”

“Racist.”

“Slaver.”

Impasse. They glare for a snapping second, before Yondu snorts and heads for the bar, retracing his steps. “Okay, I'mma take ya up on that drink. But only so long as ya don't say shit, and ya make like we're in a client meet. Which means that at the end of it, ya make a sweet lil' credit transfer into my accounts. Capisce?”

Kree-guy humors him. “A client meet in a bar like this? Shouldn't we head somewhere a little more private?” Yondu's eyes do a fine impression of blaster barrels, what with the bioluminescent glow. “Yep. Don't trust me. Public it is.”

And so, they sit. “Gin, right?” says the Kree. Yondu's sneer gets sneerier; Kree-guy rolls his eyes. “It's what you ordered last time.”

“You remember?”

“Not every day you see Yondu fuckin' Udonta at one of these gigs. Or that you try to buy him a drink.”

“And get turned down.”

“I'm doing better this time, right?”

Yondu slouches on his stool with crossed arms. He's relaxed only from a distance; the arrow on his lap speaks far more eloquently than body language. “I'm lettin' you pay 'cause yer dumb enough to fork out. Don't expect nothin' in return.”

“Oh, it's my pleasure.”

“Hmph.”

All in all, Yondu supposes he ain't the worst company. Still wouldn't ever bang him, because, well, _Kree._ But nevertheless. You could pick worse guys to neck a bottle with.

The bartender's watching them oddly. Yondu could've sworn he's seen him somewhere before, although he can't place where. He's a half-breed (so someone less tactful and politically correct than Yondu might say). His skin tone's of a shade with the Kree's, but his eyes... They ain't quite the matte black of a luphomoid, but they're mighty close: shiny as an oyster, with pupil and iris poorly defined.

...And he's young and pretty and a fair bit Yondu's slimmer. Kraglin's type through and through. Yondu scoffs and turns away. He hears him him clack about with the glasses behind, but it's only lateral; his attention is on the real threat. “So tell me, Kree.”

“Don't you want to know my name?”

“Eh, not really. How'd I know you ain't gunnin' for me? That'chu ain't lookin' to cart me back to my masters?” A rumbly snigger. “If there's any left I ain't got round to killin'.”

The Kree drums his fingers on the counter, smile far too relaxed. “I won't. You're not the only one with a price on your head. I know the Accusers too well to think they'd let me walk in recompense for hauling you in.”

The glass smacks Yondu's elbow. If Kree guy had a split second alone with it, Yondu would've insisted they swap. But he ain't, and Yondu doesn't fancy his order – it's a noxious pink, too sugary-looking for his taste. A tiny anti-grav bead rolls around the flute, making the liquid swirl in a constant whirlpool, an inch between it and the glass.The floral stink cloys in Yondu's nostrils over the meter between them.

Yondu might not be a skirt-chaser no more, but he ain't ready to drink a cocktail. He tips his glass at Kree-guy in a half-mocking toast.

“To freedom then.”

“To freedom.”

And way down it goes.

 

* * *

 

The Ravagers are due to decouple in the wee hours of Dizerall's dawn, when the sky is the tender pink of a raw chicken breast and the ocean is flat as faience plate, looted from a Kree sun-tomb. Perfect planning on the captain's part; means his boys won't have to haul stock in the mid-cycle heat.

Yondu ain't gonna be joining them.

When he wakes it's with a groan of the duration usually reserved for a dying man's exhale. _So much for freedom,_ his mind feeds him, though he can't work out why.

Then it hits.

Tightness. Constriction. Air drawn too slow into his lungs, like he's breathing syrup. Old scars reopened.

A collar around his neck.

That ain't even the worst of it. His leather shell's been peeled off and his shirt hangs in rags. Knife-slashes, whip-stripes, brands, twists of gnarly crest-bone; all of it bared to the galaxy.

Yondu proceeds to do what any man would. He freaks the fuck out. In a really tough, macho sorta way, which involves no mad yanking on the chain that attaches his collar to the wall, making the interior ring of spikes pierce, and precisely zero screams.

Blood pools behind his clavicles, mingling with fear-sweat. This is what he gets, for trusting a Kree! Evil, warmongering, slave-keeping _fucks!_ Monsters, the whole dang lot of 'em. If Yondu had to condone a genocide against any race, he'd pick those big blue a-holes: blast them with an Infinity Stone, scour Hala and all her affiliate systems, all the solar-harvesters and hydroponic satellites, until there was nothing left but _ash_ and _dust_ and _fire_ and memories he can't fucking escape no matter how much liquor's in his bloodstream.

Which doesn't explain why the big blue a-hole is hissing at him from the other end of the unfamiliar brig: “Quiet! Calm down! Dammit, Udonta, we have to work together here!”

“Get away from me,” Yondu says, in a measured and cool kinda way. Like one of those Terran heroes Quill is always singing the praises of. The Kree squishes himself to the wall.

“Stop screeching, dammit! I'm as far away as I can get! Quit – look, you need to stop pulling at it. I've seen these collars in action.” He motions to the twin of Yondu's, wrapped snug around his own neck. “You're not getting out of it by yourself.”

Yondu knows so. Ain't gonna stop him trying. He bares his teeth, spit flecking his chin. One sharp yank and his airways close, blood drooling from his gnashed lips as he's choked and stabbed simultaneously.

The Kree's eyes pop wide. He crawls forwards _,_ pausing when Yondu flinches – more like: throws himself backwards and flings his hands in front of his face in a move not even he can pass off as preordained.

“Stop, Udonta! Stop. You're hurting yourself.”

“I'll hurt myself if I wanna hurt myself!” Because they don't own him, not anymore. They don't decide when he's beaten, when he fights, when he's strung up to the whipping post or sent to the gladiatorial rings to butcher all the juvenile slaves he tentatively called _friend._ They don't own _shit._

Yondu gasps in aching spasms. The collar around his neck makes every inhale taste like it's been prescribed with a mouthful of acid. His chest and shoulders rise and fall in shudders, and his head throbs full _,_ borderline painful, as a great pressure builds behind his temples. Belatedly, he recognizes it as panic.

The Kree looks equally terrified. White rings his purple eyes. Those bleached circles only expand, pupils shrinking to pinpricks, when Yondu wets his lips with a shaky lick, tasting blood and the bitter metal of his incisors. He whistles on the third try.

Nothing. No response, no flare from his crest, no soar and stab of an arrow. Which is lucky for the Kree and all, but Yondu can be forgiven for not caring.

He tugs on his collar again. The tremble starts from his feet and works its way up, infecting every muscle on the way. If he was alone, he could clamp down on it. He could squeeze his eyes shut and focus on _breathing._ He could rustle up a way out of here, something genius and hodgepodge that might get Quill quoting Macguyver, rather than shredding himself on the spikes like some dumb animal. Like a Kree slave high off his head on aggro-meds, about to be released into the gladiator ring.

But there's nothing. Nothing but shitty lighting and pain – and the Kree, of course, wincing from the pitch of his whistles, hands clapped over his ears.

Yondu doesn't hear the door open. It'd be hard to, what with the rattling chains and the shrill chirp of his whistle. That sounds again and again, futile, desperate, a fledgling batted between feral vulcan-cats on Morag.

He doesn't hear the barman lifting a tranq gun. Doesn't hear him lowering it again either, slipping the lock more assuredly into place, before he settles the crosshairs on the artery ticking fast as a drum roll above Yondu's collar. He doesn't even hear the Kree growl and snap “ _don't you fucking dare!_ ”

There's only the prick, the woozy encroach, the sudden vertigo as the room spins like a centrifuge. A drawbridge raises; darkness reels across his vision from the bottom up.

Yondu Udonta flops face first in a puddle of his own blood and drool. He doesn't get up again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **AW SHIIIIIIIIIIII -**
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> **Leave me comments babbies! x You'll find out a bit more about the barman later.**
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> ****


	25. Damsels in Distress

If there's one thing Yondu hates, it's acting the damsel.

That's not quite true. He discovered the concept of 'a damsel in distress' from reading too many romance datapads and listening to Quill explain the plot of his favorite Terran films (on repeat, for the past eight years). He has to admit it's genius. Far more advanced tactics than one would expect, from such a backwards species. He even employs it himself, on occasion, when it suits him to pretend like he's a helluva lot less dangerous than he is.

Memorable highlights include: letting an early crew of Stakar's, who thought they could win their captain's approval by ridding him of his traitorous ex-mate, believe that his arrow could be contained within an adamantium box. Yondu encouraged 'em to surround him in a fanned-out circle, whistled them through, and returned to the _Eclector_ in time for evening canteen.

Then there was that job on Kylntar where he had to get tortured, distracting the mark while Kraglin and Peter nabbed goodies from his vault. As soon as the all-clear crackled through his commlink Yondu put his lips together and blew. He savored the bulge of the man's compound eyes, as an arrow twizzled tip-first out of his chest.

But the point is, all those times he'd been acting the damsel, that was all it was. An  _act._ Now, talking figuratively, he _is_ her. And it's grim because of the collar, and it's infuriating because _he should've known better,_ but most of all, it's fucking _boring._

Is this what Quill and Kraglin suffer when they get kidnapped or ransomed by whichever a-hole Yondu's pissed off this week? Yondu usually enjoys a chortle at their plight, and leaves them to languish before swooping to their rescue. But it's already been a cycle. A whole fucking cycle, with a collar on his neck and a Kree his lone companion. The barman disabled his comms beacon while Yondu was unconscious, but the chronometer remains: numbers ticking, looping from twelve to one again while the Astral date advances toward infinity. Either something's gone very wrong on his rescuers' end, or karma is unnecessarily cruel.

Maybe Kraglin ain't yet noticed that he's _missing-_ missing, as opposed to simply late? Else Kraglin's just distracted - Quill spawns crises like a splitting amoeba. Without Yondu's gentle guidance, by now he could've accidentally proposed to an A'askavarian, groped a Kronan, and jilted his latest girl while she's holding a knife. Anything is possible.

Engines churn, so loud and deep that the air wobbles in his lungs. Third option: the ship is on the move, the tracking beacon in Yondu's pocket ain't working, and Kraglin ain't got the first clue where Yondu is.

Yondu might not know their coordinates, but he susses out the culprit as soon as his brain stops chewing itself in panic. He knew he recognized him from somewhere. It's the half-breed from that first dive – where Kraglin stole a drink and Taserface parked the tun barrel on the barkeep. This skinny prick had been the manager. Apparently he runs a swank side-business, chauffeuring runaways back to the Kree.

He ain't been down to gloat – too smart for that. He keeps his contact limited to the barest minimum. Less time for either of his captives to wrestle the upper hand. But it's obvious enough what's intended for them. Next time Kraglin sees Yondu's face, it'll be in the _fulfilled_ section of the bounty books, stamped with a nice fat war brand.

“He's takin' us back, ain't he,” he says. They're the first words he's said to Kree Guy at normal volume, and they croak like he's got bullfrogs for tonsils. Kree Guy shuffles to the end of his chain. His mouth twitches with fear, which Yondu's happy to mock, and empathy, which he would treat to equal ridicule were it aimed at anyone else. “He's takin' us to Hala.”

Kree Guy doesn't say shit. But he crawls until his collar drags on his neck, and they're close enough to nudge spines.

Should Yondu snap at him? Shove him away? Most likely. But the enemy of my enemy, and all that. Plus, Yondu figures as his comm beeps the tone for the night shift, that brawny blue shoulder, a few shades darker than his own, is far more comfortable than the floor.

 

* * *

 

Runaway slaves ain't the most looked-down-upon members of Kree society, but it's close. They're sub-sentient in the eyes of the Accusers. Of  _course_ the battle fodder causes a ruckus. It's in their nature! If they escape, it says more about the pens than the ingenuity of the slaves. When one goes missing, the Masters crack down; doubling everyone's obedience shots, increasing the voltage on the shock cages. A janitor might lose his job over mislaying a keycard, and the Slavekeeper will receive a stern chewing out and a cut from his salary.

As for the runaways themselves? They're executed, partially as an example to others, but mostly to prevent the continuation of their undesirable genealogy. Yondu ain't no criminal. Just loose chattel. He'll be muzzled so he can't bite as he's dragged to the central punishment post and whipped to death.

Deserters? Well, they're not nearly so lucky.

“Whaddid you do?” Yondu asks. He and Kree guy sit back to back, so the collars pull on vertebrae rather than windpipes. Kree guy chuffs a laugh, mirthless as their situation.

“Would you believe me if I told you I liberated slaves?”

Yondu's silence proclaims otherwise. Kree guy nods glumly. “You'd be right. Story's nothing special. Came from a half-half white and blue bloodline. Wasn't all that great when it came to schooling or creativity. Sucked at that arty culture-preservation shit the Accusers are so obsessed with. So I figured - hey! If I'm better at smashing things than building them, why not get paid for it?"

Yondu nods along. "You enlisted."

"Yeah. Set out in the great conquests. Had fun, too – got promoted a couple of times, and would've been again, if I hadn't left.”

War's a doozy when you're wearing impact armor, armed with a percussion hammer and guarded by a crack squad of slaves. Yondu ain't one for giving two shits about anyone's life story - hell, he barely knows Kraglin's. But they have time to kill, and jagged circlets gnawing at their necks. When steel spikes open old scars, you appreciate any distraction. “Why leave, if it were goin' so well?”

“I don't know.” Kree guy skims his collar. The brig is clammy and damp; water plips around the seals where ancient cooling pipes meld to the walls, and condensation slicks their skin together, scars to scars. “Boredom? Ennui?”

“Enny...?”

“Never mind. I'm regretting it now. How about you? Ever miss it?”

“Dunno. I mean, who I am now...”

There's an ugly truth lurking, one that's been kept tamped down far too long. Yondu doesn't mean to let it slip, but when his mouth starts wagging, he struggles to stop it. This must be what Quill feels like _constantly._

“Yondu Udonta ain't real,” he says, tone flat as his scowl. “He's just an act, y'know? Stakar made him. Heard me sayin' my number all muddled with this dumb creole accent, and heard _Yon-Doo-Doo-Yon-Ta_ instead of _One-Two-Two-One-Three._  He told me I was a Ravager now, said to watch an' learn an' become one of 'em. So I did."He scoffs at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. _“_ The kid before Yondu, he didn't know nothin' 'cept orders, and blood, and wonderin' whether he'd be fed or otherwise. Hey. Ya want the truth?"

Kree Guy nods, although he chews his lip as if suspecting he might regret it. Yondu doesn't wait for his cue.

"Think he misses it," he says, words jumbling like the waterfall from a dam sluice. "Parts of it. Not havin' to think for himself, and the like." Responsibilities are difficult, when you lived twenty years without them.

The ship limps onward. It's old, older than the _Eclector_ \- a hire-out, most likely. Their captor ain't flush, that much is for sure. No wonder he went after two bounties so far out of his depth. Desperation drives men to things not even they believe they're capable of. The fusion core thunders, reverberating like the gongs and monastic chants that fill the alpine valleys on Kymellia. Thrusters wub on full burn: a meditative mantra beneath.

Yondu has revealed too much – to a guy who showed him kindness because he wants in his pants, no less. Yet Yondu's been sitting on this for years. It's ossified inside him, hard as a kidney stone, and the pain of passing it is worth the relief. Anyway, it doesn't matter. If they make it to Hala, neither of them will leave it alive.

Kree guy absorbs this new information. Then, as Yondu suspected, he opens his mouth.

Next there'll be questions. Questions formulated in the mind of a man who can't comprehend the shit Yondu's lived through, the catacomb of hoarded traits he calls an identity. Yondu tenses, already on the defensive. He's saved in the most unexpected way.

Kraglin rappels down from a ceiling vent, hollers when he clocks Yondu ain't alone, and shoots Kree Guy in the stomach.

“What the flark!” screams the Kree. Blood bubbles from the hole. _“What the flark!”_

Yondu rolls his eyes. “Took ya long enough.”

“What the flark!” Kree guy yells again. He's holding the majority of his guts in his hands. His eyes swim up to Yondu's, dazed and a lil' misty, and _ugh,_ Yondu hates that desperate, pleading expression. It's bad enough when it's worn by Quill - or anyone whose eye color doesn't make his skin crawl. But he hates the answering grumble of his conscience even more.

Leaning to slacken the collar, he snaps fingers at his mate. “Get down here and shove his intestines back in 'im, Krags. You got any portable medicubes...?”

They're handy in a crisis. Can't perform no complex surgery, but it'll stop the blood loss and convince the brain everything's peachy so Kree guy doesn't go into shock. Should give 'em time to sort out this nonsense, and hopefully have something alive at the end of it.

Kraglin, pistol still trained on the gagging Kree, waggles midair like a toddler in a bouncer. The grapple clips to the back of his jumpsuit, making a tent in the material reminiscent of a boner in reverse.

“He's one of 'em!”

“Yeah, an' he's in a collar that hurts just as much as mine does. An' I'll want'chu to get that off me, before I go huntin' my arrow. Now geddown here, already. Orders is orders, Obfonteri.”

Orders is orders indeed. It feels good to issue them, and fucking _excellent_ to know that Kraglin ain't witnessed his lil' freak-out session. Like Yondu's in control, where he belongs. Like the collar around his throat is just a hunk of metal, deader than the yaka shards from which he's whittling his upgraded crest. Like when Kraglin's in the room, the performance he gives to the galaxy sits a little more naturally, the act flowing more easily, the encores more heartfelt.

He is Yondu Udonta. Stakar might've given him the name, but Yondu's the one who made it resound across the starways. And when he's with Kraglin, he  _wants_ to be Yondu Udonta too.

Kree Guy makes disturbing gurgly noises. While he might be a bit insistent for Yondu's liking, he doesn't actually want him dead. They've _bonded,_ or some shit like that. Quill would be jubilant.

“Geddown here,” he snaps at Kraglin again, “before the Kree ya _do_ need to worry about comes.”

Kraglin pops the clasp from his belt. He lands on his feet, hunched to soak up the impact. Something about that posture – the feral leanness of his limbs, the strength beneath the wiry exterior – makes Yondu's heart race. His tongue darts out to wet his lips, laving a spitty gloss over blue. Like he wants them to shine, catch Kraglin's attention...

Kraglin remains oblivious. Most likely he puts Yondu's huge grin down to relief that he won't be ending the week under a Kree whip.

He tends to Kree Guy, pushing his jumpsuit pocket inside out and retrieving a medicube from the lining. The cartridge clicks open on contact with blood, releasing a steady stream of nanobots and painkillers compatible with any species listed in the galactic encyclopedias as _common._ Yondu, who is technically _endangered to threat of extinction,_ has to spend longer suffering whenever he's receiving this treatment, while the medicube scans his bio-signature and makes the according adjustments to dosage. Kree guy gets to groan and sag limp after only five seconds of writhing.

After that, Kraglin turns to his cap'n.

“You should unbuckle his collar,” Yondu says hoarsely, after unsticking his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “S'more efficient. Than, uh. Walkin' over here an' back again.”

Kraglin rises. All six-foot-plus of him, his mohawk adding on an extra inch to an already lanky frame. He's back-lit, expression unreadable, but Yondu hears the fond smile as he says: “Yer only three steps apart, boss. Think I can manage. I'm seein' to ya first.”

He lopes towards Yondu. Each of those steps flows graceless and liquid, like a predatory giraffe. A submarine pod lowers through Yondu's abdomen, bottoming out behind his balls. He ain't even put off by the stink of Kree guy's entrails, steaming gently in the chilly air.

Kraglin, having helped him restuff, is coated. His hands, black and dripping as if he'd squeezed a squid, shift to Yondu's collar. They find the latch, digging into the metal, and Yondu shuts his eyes, twitching at the scrape of nail on steel. Kraglin's so close that if Yondu were to tilt his head to the right angle...

Ch-chink.

“There we go, sir.” The sourness of his breath is welcome, against the guts and blood and dissipated plasma. Yondu inhales like he's trying to swallow Kraglin's stale, leathery essence, absorb it into himself, leaning forwards with his lashes low.

There's a quiet hiss of – well, not _sympathy;_ Yondu'd have to punch the guy for that. But compassion, perhaps. Either way, something small and tender, that Yondu absolutely should not cherish, as Kraglin runs the pad of his dirty index finger around the collar's loop and feels the buried hooks.

The one beneath his ear is a calculated fraction from the artery. Yondu's seen plenty of slaves thrash hard enough to pop it – thank flark Kree guy intervened and yelled him back to his senses when he did. Yondu's grateful enough to save his life in return. 

“Do it,” he murmurs. His breath bounces off Kraglin's too-close lips. There's a surreal washiness to the moment, like he's trying to remember a dream. Having another body this close – a living one, rather than silicone – is warmer than he expected. Heat radiates from Kraglin's face, and Yondu convinces himself it's because he's blushing. He doesn't crack his eyelids to check, just in case he's mistaken. He rocks forwards, and manages not to flinch at the blaze of a forehead pressed on his. “What'chu waitin' for, boy? Do it. C'mon...”

He's not quite sure what he's asking for. But the jolt as Kraglin yanks out five barbs at once ain't it.

Yondu's eyes pop. He claps a hand over his neck – or he makes to. Kraglin snatches his wrist before he can slam the collar spikes in again. Blood trickles around his clavicle. “What the hell?”

“Sorry, sorry! You said 'do it', an' -”

He can't say ' _I meant kiss me_ '. No matter how much he wants to.

Kraglin stutters through his explanation, releasing Yondu's clenched forearm to flap at the air. “I thought it'd be like a bandage. Y'know – rip it off quick?”

“It's not a bandage,” Yondu seethes. “Issa collar! A flarkin' Kree slave collar! An' that _hurt!_ ”

“I- I know that sir, but... Here.” He gives the remaining spikes a tug. Watches Yondu's grimace grow, canines glinting under the low brig lights. “See? It's in pretty deep. I dunno how I'm supposed to get it out, an'... an'...”

Usually, Kraglin's eyes are misty grey. But here and now, against the red wash from Yondu's implant, their blue is startling. Damn near his own skintone, that. Like they're designed to match – a tie to complement the suit. And he's still close enough that it would only take a nudge to have their mouths colliding. Fuck it all.

Kree guy groans again, a long slur that translates to “hurry the fuck up.” For once in his life, Yondu listens.

“Slow then,” he grits. “But like, quick-slow. Before the bastard notices ya stealth-docked.” Depending on how experienced he is - Yondu hopes not very - that could be a minute or an hour.

“Quick-slow?” Despite the situation, despite the tension, a devious twitch crinkles one corner of Kraglin's mouth. “Are ya askin' me to be gentle with ya, sir?”

God. Hands smoothing up his thighs, pressing on them to part, then hooking under so Kraglin can slot beneath. A thumb circling his cockhead, dipping to the balls, then lower, twizzling torture-slow over his hole. _Can I,_ breathed direct into his mouth, and then once the tense, trembling nod is received, another murmur of _relax, sir,_ and a languid, deep roll into him, a penetration that goes on and on, filling him until the very air he gasps out is _Kraglin..._

“Uh, sir? You okay?”

Yondu blinks to the present. “Peachy,” he says, and blames all strangulation on the collar. “Get this offa me, Krags.”

“Hm.” Kraglin shuffles on his knees, tilting his head through a variety of ever-more ridiculous angles as if that'll help him patch together an extraction plan. He pulls at one side of the opened ring, using the spiked tooth as a handhold, then the still-attached end. He can't get the best grip, what with all the blood.

Finally, Kraglin settles behind him. His exhalations would tickle the hairs on the back of Yondu's neck, if he had any. As it is, they register as a slow drizzle of heat around his implant base, like a hair dryer melting iceblocks. Yondu almost expects to feel trickles of liquefying crystal joining the blood on his back.

His shirt's ruined, from where the bartender dragged him to the dock. Every scar's on show. Kraglin's close enough that his ribbed chest piece brushes the protruding lumps of his _tahlei,_ and he ain't said a word. Hell, but Yondu's never wanted anyone more.

“Sit up a bit, sir,” Kraglin says. It ain't an order – Kraglin knows better. Yondu finds himself obeying nevertheless, pushing to his knees – but that brings his neck further from Kraglin. “Naw, come back down, lighting's bad. Gotta have you close.”

He sounds grouchy, but resigned to a crikked spine from stooping. Yondu can't have that. First mate's back health is real important, considering it's his job to shoulder the weights of any responsibilities his captain neglects.

“Here,” he whispers. The words crackle in his throat. Yondu scoots until the top side of Kraglin's bony thighs rests on the underside of his own, tucked beneath the arch of his legs. He almost overbalances when his ass brushes abdomen. Kraglin instinctively grabs his waist to steady him. Then relocates his hands to his sides in a snap-motion that bashes his knuckles on the floor.

“S-sorry sir -”

“Quiddit.”

Oh hell. If Yondu sits down, there's two layers of leather and a cup between him and Kraglin's dick.

He unsticks his throat from itself, swallowing several times to reintroduce moisture. Taking Kraglin's stillness for permission – that or the boy's simply too shocked to react – he settles. The clanking chain is frigid, a balm against his flush. His thighs tremble – not from the strain of kneeling, but from the _intimacy,_ as he raises his head and air gushes over his nape, air from Kraglin's lips. “Close enough?”

Yondu ekes satisfaction from the quavery reply: “C-close enough, sir. Now, uh. Stay still. I ain't gonna hurt ya.”

He does. But it ain't intentional, so Yondu doesn't hold it against him. He sits transfixed, ass spread over Kraglin's groincup, timing his breaths to match the swell and contract of the ribcage against his whip-scars. It stings. But Yondu concentrates on breathing, inhales and exhales uninterrupted as another hook is worked from his flesh, and another, and another...

Until finally, none are left.

The weight vanishes. Yondu's free.

“All done, sir,” says Kraglin. His husk is gravelled as Yondu's, but when he skates the wounds in Yondu's neck with black-smeared fingers, he's all business. “These ain't nice. Mijo oughta take a look – hit'chu up with a tetanus shot, an' all.” He rubs Yondu's arm: the only contact between them that ain't for a purpose. Rough palms scrape gooseflesh. “Plus, yer freezin'. We gotta get movin'.”

Or they could loaf about the brig a while longer, generate warmth in the traditional way. But no. When Yondu finally deigns to let the light back in – what little of it is to be found, in this dismal bunker – Kree guy drapes over his focal point. His skin is wan by Kree standards – closer to aquamarine than cornflower, like the blood puddle has sapped his color. Even with a medicube, he'll be dead within the hour.

Yondu meant what he said about responsibilities. It'd be so much easier, so much _nicer,_ to enjoy this closeness until the barkeep shows up with a bazooka and takes it all away. But he's got Kree Guy to think about. Quill too - Kraglin's outdone himself, if he's managed to prevent him tagging along. Nosy brat never could resist a chance to play hero. No matter how wild and free you live, no matter how much distance you put between yourself and the law, civilization, or Ogordian code, there are always tethers to tie you down.

Yondu's biggest tether (Quill notwithstanding) is wriggling about under him, trying to reintroduce bloodflow to his asscheeks. Yondu sighs.

“Awright,” he says, standing. He probes his throbbing neck holes and looks anywhere but Kraglin. “Les show this a-hole what happens when ya fuck with Ravagers.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who's ready for the baddie to meet his grisly end? :D Tell me in the comments!


	26. Enemy Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **fggfgfgfg have a short chapter because my brain's still a lil dead. Next chapter = badass Kraglin!**

It ain't so much that he can  _track_  it, as it's an extension of him. No matter where he is, no matter what he's doing, an internal compass needle swings in the arrow's direction. It  _pulls,_ like the gossamer thread that lashes it to his hip holster has an invisible twin, knotted around his heart.

Distance makes that tug lessen. There have been times - sting jobs where he pretends to be captured, and the rare occasion when his guard slips and he actually is - when he's been out of range. It hollows him like they've taken a pound of flesh. On those jobs his arrow hovers one phase away from the tangible sphere, like a phantom limb (or a phantom  _tahlei,_ more like). But all the lightyears in the galaxy can't nullify their connection entirely.

It intensifies as he swarms the grapple rope, leaving Kree-guy in a modified recovery position with one arm folded over his guts in an effort to keep 'em where they belong. He touches his head briefly, wincing, and frowns as the needlepoint swings.

The bastard's got the arrow on him. He's approaching, and fast.

“Cap'n,” Kraglin hisses urgently, from above. He dangles halfway through the hole, hand outstretched. “Y'alright? You need to climb.”

Yondu grits his teeth, swinging one handed from the rope. He strokes the new holes in his throat, then squeezes a blood-dark fist.

“Comin',” he says.

 

* * *

 

They prowl through the corridors together. Kraglin rigs a converge signal, honing on their location - in five minutes the Ravager fleet will pop out of hyperspace, an armada of patchwork shuttles made from scuppered Nova cruisers, jetsam, and scrap. Every so often a weld joint is wrenched apart by the vacuum, or an airlock seal buckles. But men are more replaceable than ships, and so long as Yondu can keep forging signatures on the papers that proclaim his craft spaceflight worthy and his crew keep buying it, their fleet rivals Stakar's own.

Well, not Stakar's. Maybe Aleta's. Charlie's, at a push.

Yondu knows he can't compete. If he doesn't make this tithe deal worth something to Stakar, he'll be shot from the sky. But he's a tenacious bugger, and Stakar knows it. While he could swoop in, pulverize the lot of 'em and swoop out again, satisfied that this trade route is free for the picking, he's well aware of Yondu's skill set.

Battle slave training was rigorous and wide-ranging. Yondu has competence drilled into his marrow, both on the open plains, and terrain less conducive to wars of the 'run and charge at each other with bayonets' variety. Should his old Admiral invade, Yondu will utilize every guerrilla tactic, cash in on every favor, and do everything in his power to bring him down – or, failing that, make his life hell. Easier for Stakar to dangle the threat of eviction over his head, collect rent, and stick to his old homestead.

Yondu doesn't like it, but he's in a corner. It's a pretty shitty corner, so he's understandably pissed that someone would  _abduct_ him from it and try to sell him back into a cage.

“I'm gonna rip off his head,” he seethes to Kraglin as they stalk through the tunnels, following the lure of the arrow embedded in Yondu's brain. “And then feed it to him. Lessee if Mr Bounty Hunter likes that!”

Kraglin pauses halfway through a step, deciphering the logistics. Then shrugs, and carries on. Good lad. That's one of many reasons Yondu likes him; he's willing to accept that Yondu can bend the laws of biology (and occasionally those of relativity, astrophysics, and the Universal Rights Accord for Sentient Species) if it will get him what he wants.

Meanwhile, the buzz behind his implant saws louder every second. Yondu signals for Kraglin to stay quiet – upraised index, wagged twice _._ It's Ravager sign-lang, learned from Stakar, and while Yondu would  _love_ to develop a whole unique communication system for when it ain't practical to holler orders, that would take time he doesn't have and effort he can't be asked to give.

They're close.

He tries a whistle. It's soft and sweet, and high enough to make the hairs rise on the back of Kraglin's neck, judging by the way he rubs them and shivers in his spaceboots. Their soles are a step up from hobnails, ridged with a synthetic gripping weave which can be magnetized if you click the heels together 'like you're going to Oz' (wherever on Terra that may be). Very useful for operations in zero-G. The downside? They're heavy, clompy, and far from practical to sneak about in. But you can't outfit your crew of space pirates in plimsolls. Yondu makes the best with what he has – which means black boots, a first mate, and no arrow.

“Fuck,” he hisses, breaking the silence. “He's got it stowed. Yaka box – gotta be. We need to get in close.”

This is the part he doesn't like. Everything's so much  _easier_ with a ranged weapon that can be whistled around corners.

Of course, without his natural crest, Yondu needs a sight line to kill – else he risks sending his arrow frolicking merrily through his own crew. Here and now though, Kraglin's by his side and Kree guy languishes in the cell below. If any of Yondu's men are dumb enough not to wait for the charge order, they deserve an arrow between their ears. Evidently, there ain't much of a brain there.

Before he can get to the murdering though, he's gotta retrieve the arrow. Yondu hunches like he's preparing to spring, muscles thickening across broad shoulders. His thighs flex tight to the leather of his pants.

Right now, his implant informs him that his arrow is around the next fork.

“Ready,” he breathes.

Kraglin is a rubber band, pulled taut in preparation to twang. A grenade hangs from his belt. He unhilts a knife for one hand and a plasma pistol for the other – bog standard weaponry, by the galaxy's standards, but more than enough to give a Kree a headache, especially when wielded by a guy like Kraglin. He may not have superpowers to speak of, but he's trained himself to kill with whatever's closest to hand, ever since he was a rat foraging for scraps in the junk pits on Knowhere.

“Perhaps you oughta let me handle this, sir?”

It's voiced very, very carefully. Yondu's spring into the corridor is disrupted. He sags, turning to Kraglin with a scowl. “What?”

“Yer still bleeding.” Kraglin nods; Yondu glances down. He's right. Blood drains sluggishly from the reservoir behind Yondu's clavicles. Not enough to concern, but the wounds make a fine distraction, stinging whenever he pulls air into his lungs. “And yer unarmed.”

“Then gimme yer pistol!”

“We both know I'm the better shot, sir. Look, I'm just sayin', per'aps you oughta let me handle this.” His gaze flicks at Yondu's sideways as he moves abreast. There's something snake-like in his posture: lean and mean and coiled to pounce. He'll latch onto whatever he can snap his jaws around and swallow it whole.

Kraglin don't get like this outside of a battle. His snarling grin portends violence. Usually though, when Kraglin slips into war-mode Yondu is too busy whistling jaunty tunes and felling armies to notice. 

“Sure,” he says hoarsely. Heat nuzzles his groin from the inside. He waves him ahead, pulse hammering his eardrums. “Honey, go knock yerself out.”

 


	27. Into the Dark

Kree-guy – _other_ Kree-guy; Yondu should've asked his gut-mangled friend his name, so he could differentiate – scans the corridor ahead. He straddles a portable turret. It trundles on silent wheels, gliding over the smooth tunnel floors. No wonder Yondu hadn't heard footsteps.

That ain't good.

What's less good is the automated tracking nodule, topped with an infrared camera. It flashes and swings unerringly in their direction.

“Shit!” Kraglin flings himself from the line of fire. He crushes against the wall. The bulk of the turret's spewed flak hurtles at Yondu. “Cap'n!”

Yondu slams metal. Grapeshot judders all around him, a deafening hail. Old twisted forks and recycled bullets pepper the gunwale. They leave dents in the vent duct by his ear. A pipe cracks – steam hisses. Kraglin yells again, a ghost in mist, slim form twisting in desparation: “Cap'n!”

“Here! Y'alright?”

No time to fret about showing sentiment. Ain't no crew around to care. Yondu certainly doesn't. Not about appearances, not now – only about Kraglin.

Thankfully, his voice sounds almost immediately, no pause to insinuate a lie. “Yessir!”

He must've plastered himself to the wall behind the edge of an airlock partition. Those ring the corridor at regular intervals, designed to slam closed in case of fire or breach. Yondu's gut would stick out if he opted for that route (shaddup) but there's markedly less of Kraglin to shoot.

That don't make him invulnerable though. Yondu doesn't want to peel pieces of him out of the cracks between the grills. And yet...

Yondu thinks of Kraglin's grin, the hook of fangs over his lip.

“Fetch my arrow, boy!” he calls.

The echo of the salvo fades. Tinnitus rings. It ain't enough to drown out the thump of Kraglin's fist against his chest.

He really is a good boy, that Kraglin. Trustworthy. Most loyal mate a man could ask for – so Yondu makes an addendum to his order, before Kraglin can hurl himself into battle in his name.

“And don't get yerself dead, y'hear me Obfonteri? Thas an order!”

This time, the chest-thump is accompanied by words: “Sir, yessir!”

“I can hear you, y'know!” shouts the bartender. Yondu can't see him. He'd only gotten a flash of his face before the turret started to blaze. But he pictures him now: a slim sleek streak of a man, not much jaw to clench. If they'd met under different circumstances, Kraglin might've taken him home for a fling. Then Yondu could only have _fantasized_ about killing him.

Crack.

Kraglin tosses a decoy to the far side of the corridor. The turret roars it's answer.

Crackle.

His knife embeds itself in the turret's undercarriage, charge zipping along the length of the blade. It trembles, glowing lurid green. The circuits short and the entire gun piece swivels around its gyroscope, spewing flak in an arc, before drooping forlornly to rest.

Silence. Bar the jangle of loose grapeshot from the barrels, and the bartender's cusses.

“Don't!” he yells. Yondu hears the wobble in his voice from where he stands, metal chill soaking through the meat of his back. Are the hands holding his pistol just as shaky, just as fumbling? Kraglin's gonna have fun with this one. “Don't, I'm warning you, don't come any closer, I'm armed!”

“So'm I, a-hole.” Kraglin snarls, more guttural than Yondu's ever heard him. _Damn,_ this is turning him on. Ain't no one to see, ain't no one to judge. No one but Kraglin, and a guy who's due to be dead in very short order. Yondu could duck from cover and observe – the bartender's busy prying himself from his cradle of unresponsive machinery, pistol wavering between the patches of shadow where Kraglin lopes, advancing in increments, creeping from one doorframe to the next. “But I got one thing ya don't. Two things, actually.”

“O-oh yeah? What's that?” Empty bravado. Yondu utilizes it often, and with considerably more convincing results. He sniggers, implant clonking on the wall. He shivers low in his belly, at the creak of Kraglin's next prowling step.

“A grenade,” growls Kraglin, at the bottom of his register. The answering swell of heat in Yondu's crotch would make him think he'd popped a groin artery. There's no accompanying spurt though – just _warmth,_ tingling and writhing and _wanting._ Yondu's so distracted that he almost misses Kraglin's next words: “And a space mask.”

He has enough time to think 'oh no'.

Then a pin tinkles across the floor grills, skittering from one twisted wire to the next. It slips into the mass of throbbing pipelines below.

Pleep. Pleep. Active explosive.

Five beeps, that's all you have. Kraglin holds it for three, by the time adrenaline punches Yondu like a steel-gloved fist.

“Kraglin!” he blurts, before he can clamp on the word. But then Kraglin aims and releases in a fluid motion, and the grenade hits the porthole window just as the fifth little ping resounds.

Localized incendiaries are designed for this. They create a concentrated explosion rather than a big flash and a boom. Yondu's grateful. Means he won't have to patch his arrow together from shrapnel.

The burn though? That's more than intense enough to eat through reinforced space glass.

“See ya on the other side,” says Kraglin, before his spacemask folds across his mouth. There's a grin in his voice, and Yondu finds himself emulating it, before the last of the glass melts away.

Decompression gushes like a waterfall in reverse. It slurps out air, along with anything else not tethered down. All of it gone, whirling out into the void in a screeching typhoon.

Yondu listens for all of a second before the blastdoor slams shut. Barely any oxygen leaches from his compartment. The levels ain't even waned to the point where Yondu's short of breath. Well, he _is,_ but not for that reason.

He can pretend, like he always does. Blame it on the thrill of a fight – even if he hadn't _technically_ taken part. But he knows the true cause, and he has to force himself still to compose himself, rubbing the raw holes in his neck until he's ready to face whatever might be waiting for him through the airlock window...

Kraglin taps on the glass with his arrow.

Yondu can't see his face, not through the articulated plates of the mask. He doesn't need to. He knows that smile: a little goofy, a lot yellow, smelling of tooth plaque and warmth.

“I can't let ya in,” he says hoarsely. He knows Kraglin can't hear him, but he's always been good at reading lips, even if Yondu can't return the favor. “Don't got my mask on me, and we ain't got no airlock now.”

But he rests his palm on the glass, fingers squeaking. It ebbs warm from the explosion. Kraglin's hand, shimmering from the vac-suit field, rests against its opposite side, and a misty five-fingered star disrupts the spread of spacefrost.

Yondu curls his fingers. What would it be like, to feel Kraglin's slide between them, rather than cool, gripless glass? He sees Kraglin doing the same, floating a few inches above the ruptured floor plating. The blank starred map of space stretches behind him, visible through the shredded porthole.

Yondu ought to stomp off and find himself some sorta garment to cover his scars before his crew descend on the ship and strip it from observation deck to engines. Perhaps tramp back down to the brig and see if he can make Kree-guy any more comfortable. But in this moment, there ain't nowhere he needs to be more than here: hand against Kraglin's, glass and a deadly vacuum between them, his arrow safe in his first mate's fist.

The M-ship's headlamps cut through the dark. Yondu squints into the glare. He can't see the man in the cockpit, only able to pick out the faintest silhouette. But that silhouette looks roughly the height of a sixteen-year-old Terran.

“C'mon then,” he says quietly, eyeteeth crinkling his top lip. “Les' go home, boy. You an' me.”

Kraglin watches his mouth. Moving clumsy in zero-G, he brings his curled fist to his chest and taps twice, the bartender twisting a slow revolution behind him, gaping his suffocated scream.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **The second half of the last chapter, edited at last! Thank you so much for all your comments on the last one. I've been having a bit of a shitty time mental-health wise - winters are always hard for me. This past week especially I've been a lot brighter though! That's partially to do with seeing my boyfriend again, and a lot to do with all of you guys, and everyone who comments on my work, interacts with my tumblr stuff, and generally chats to me. Thank you all for not letting me isolate myself into a miserable depression cocoon.**


	28. Take Me Home

Ravagers strip ships faster than they strip bot hookers, and with much the same tenderness.

Maglocks clamp on hull plates. A couple months back, a bank vault job necessitated the confiscation of a mining ship. Yondu ain’t yet decided whether it’s worth more as a tool or a one-time sell on the black market, although this sways his opinion towards the former.

Magnetic balls rattle along grooves, which criss-cross the mining vessel like worm burrows. They meet at its prow, spinning on their axes and triangulating five dozen lasers to a single point. The resultant beam is hot enough to melt diamond.

Oblo steers. Their miner ain’t the most manoeuvrable, but the kid does his best, tongue poking the sores around his mouth as he targets weld seams one by one.

Four concentrated blasts and a sheet peels away, thirty foot square. Oblo grabs it with the miner’s automated arms. Crunch, crunch, crunch; he crushes it into a cube. More magnets lock on. M-ships swoop to harvest the dense blocks as soon as they’re patted into shape, and ferry them to the Eclector’s hold. The cubes are destined for the smelting stations, where metal melts in crucibles, blended and shaken like white-hot cocktails.

The engine components – reaction chamber, power core, the hexagonal cog-like transformers that convert raw energy into charge – are last to be dissembled. It’s a painstaking process, even after the reactor is disengaged. Inadvisable, to flay a ship this large under time pressure. Let the temperature drop too rapidly and fusion turns to fission. Then – woah, whoops, you’ve got a ship overflowing with radioactive waste and a bunch of recruits with fast-acting terminal skin cancer. Well-fucking-done to you.

Glowing ghosts frequent this desolate starscape. Abandoned vessels left floating in the black, their holds shine luminous green. Waste overflows their superstructures, calcifying like a kidney stone wherever it comes into contact with space. Any poor sod who doesn't hear the Evac Alarm gets buried in ionizing sludge.

Luckily, Yondu's deconstruction crew are the cream of the crop. Or close to it. The real cream of the crop stayed with Stakar, but Yondu has skimmed (threatened/blackmailed/outright kidnapped) a few gems from his admiral, over the years. He trusts 'em to handle it. No sense staging a surprise inspection; he’ll only get in their way.

Plus, the sooner he returns to his cabin, the sooner he can throw on a shirt.

They ain’t looking at him. Course not. Nobody would dare.

Yondu ain't prone to sauntering around in a state of undress. At one point a bunch of smart asses generated a poll, betting on who would be first to see him in less than two layers (Kraglin excluded, on account of the bathroom-sharing). Yondu only realized after declining his third strip poker invitation, at which point he ceremoniously brigged the instigators and put them on indefinite bog-plunging duty until they learned the error of their ways. Some of them may still be there.

However, contrary to popular opinion, his crew ain’t imbeciles. Oh sure, when it comes to counting and literacy and all that Nova edumacation shit, they hardly score high enough to register for sentience. But judge a yolopp on its ability to climb trees and you'll never guess they're an apex predator.

Point of the matter is, every man in his faction who survives his first galactic Standard boasts skills in one particular field. They know when their captain’s pissed off, and they recognize the warning signs that precede a whistle. Right now, those signs – the knotted shoulders, the glower, the stormy shadows under the eyes – are enhanced both by his rare shirtless status, and the band of wounds that grasp his neck in a navy noose.

Kraglin is equally well-versed in Yondu's warning displays. But unlike the rest of the men, he doesn’t cower from him. After his void-diving adventure, he latched onto Quill’s M-ship and hitched a ride to the nearest breach point. Now he jogs to catch his captain up, hand hovering an inch off a scarred blue shoulder, and offers him his jumpsuit.

“Won't fit,” says Yondu, who may or may not have already weighed up the benefits of prying Kraglin out of it. So he could steal it, obviously. “An', uh. You'd be in yer underwears.”

Kraglin shifted uncomfortably. “Less than that, sir. Y’kinda shocked us, goin’ AWOL like that. Didn’t grab nothin’ 'cept armaments an' my leathers.”

There ain’t much more mortifying than his crew seeing how much scar tissue and burn-shiny brand his back is composed of. However, them witnessing him sprout a semi might just trump it.

Yondu holds his breath until he can blame it for his purpling face.

They’ve partitioned the ship's corridors, selecting a segment to use as by-ways while the mining rig detaches exterior plates. Yondu marches through an enfilade of airlocks, stepping aside only for the gurney.

“You're  _sure_  you want this one saved?” Like Mijo hasn't asked that five times already. She’s one of those who followed him from Stakar’s ranks – she knows where he comes from, the shit he's seen.

Yondu studies Kree guy's face. It’s slack-mouthed, drool-chinned, pale as winter sky. His life hangs on Yondu's words. He ain’t even awake to hear the verdict. The needle of instinctual hatred jabbers at his guts, but it doesn’t stitch a knot in them and pull.

“Yeah,” he says. “Keep him breathin'.” Mijo nods, adjusting the oxy-mask over Kree guy's nose. He moans, conscious enough to press a hand to his belly, the contents of which have unwound like a malfunctioning cassette tape.

Kraglin scoffs. Whatever that might mean.

Yondu resists the urge to rub the gooseflesh on his arms as she wheels her cargo by. The man's still a Kree, no matter what he divulged to Yondu as they sat together in the dark.

Kraglin doesn’t flank him like he usually does, but walks a pace behind, almost as if he's shielding Yondu's scar collection from sight. Yondu appreciates the effort. He appreciates the niggling scratch of Kraglin's gaze as it swoops down his back far less.

“Quit starin',” he says, trying to sound blasé. “I know they're ugly, but they ain't nothin' you ain't seen before. Hell, even went an' got yerself a matchin’ set, idjit.”

“Huh? Oh – oh I wasn't, I -” Judging by the fluster from behind, Kraglin's averting his gaze to any patch of unscarred skin. When the hunt proves futile, he deflates. “Nothin', sir.”

He lengthens his stride – stupid lanky legs – until his buckle clinks on Yondu's belt. Idjit’s damn near plastered to him. Might as well be a parasite: one of them bloated buggers that comprises half the victim’s bodyweight.

Yondu does his best to pay attention to other things. The crack in the copper piping overhead, which'll knock a good quarter off the salvage price. The dodgy looking seal around the next blast door.

He logs them in his brain, setting up a running tally, and knows from the silence that Kraglin conducts a similar census. He’ll pick up on anything Yondu misses and vice versa. Between the two of them, they'll make a plausible price evaluation.

“Back to ship then.” He shifts the scraps of his underjacket over his torso: a mosaic of leather and scars. “M'chilly.”

Kraglin's too smart to question his excuse. “Yer gonna see the doc, right?” he asks. The blue-grey pipes of the bartender’s vessel swap for stark reds and blacks as they enter the  _Eclector_  boarding tube. That's long and articulated and amusingly phallic. Yondu usually musters a snigger as he strides through it, but today, he ain't in the mood. He's sore and tired and still a touch horny, and Kraglin's standing far too close. “Bout those...”

A cool finger brushes his neck. Yondu flinches.

Catching himself, he glares until Kraglin beats his retreat. His mate doesn't give up though, walking backwards along the primary tunnel that delivers pirates to mess hall, Bridge, and beyond: “I'll bring bandages round tonight, sir!”

Yeah. Cause  _that's_ what Yondu wants Kraglin to do to him during sleep-shift.

A rookie shuffles along the tunnel behind him, aimed for the ship. She might be shirking work – a mid-ranking crime – but she's definitely trying to peep at him whenever he blinks, which is far more serious. Yondu growls at her. It ain’t comprehensible words. Just an animal noise, one that compounds the frustration of the last fourteen-plus hours. Spit shoots through the snaggles in his teeth and the rookie's knees cinch like she's trying not to piss.

“You mess my floor,” Yondu says, low and menacing, “you lick it up.”

Unintentionally kinky, but it does the trick. She scarpers.

His scars sizzle as if someone’s tracing them with a piping bag full of molten candlewax. The salvage crew stand in tableau, frozen except for the spin of sparks from their circular saws. They peer at their captain along the boarding tunnel, observing him from peripherals and eye-stalks and the occasional compound lens. Few last a second before glancing away.

 

* * *

  

Kraglin's door is shut by the time he reaches their corridor. His ain't.

Yondu hesitates. He thumbs the fletching on his arrow. He's stroked that so many times his fingers know the topography better than his eyes, dipping and rising around the glowing yaka beads on muscle memory. The adrenaline rush from the battle – if such a short, sweet fight can be called that – has waned. Yondu’s exhausted, hungry, thirsty, and ready to murder the next person to look at him crossways.

Whichever dumbass just broke into his quarters will make for an excellent victim. And, once he’s finished with them, perhaps a conversation piece for his wall, or a nice ornamental rug. The Saggra people can do stunning things with an uncured skin, or so he’s heard.

It ain’t to be. He hears voices, but they don’t belong to thieves, squabbling over his stash of tourist crud and mediocre Xandarian novellas. They’re more rhythmic, lyrical. Almost like they’re…

Singing.

The last chorus on Quill’s tape finishes with a quiet click. There proceeds silence, and a snore.

Yondu’s kidnapping (captain-napping?) fucked up the shifts something rotten. They must’ve mobilized mid-night cycle, after he hit worry-hour. While the chronometer reports that Quill ought to be halfway through his morning work placement, he  _had_ been the first Ravager on-site. Made a damn fine job of it too: scooping Kraglin up while the enemy ship bimbled on towards Kreespace.

Yondu supposes he can have the day off. Half the day. Maybe another hour or so – so long as he doesn’t spend it filling his private quarters with that teenaged Terran stink.

Quill snorts awake as his captain stomps past. It’d be nice if it was out of an innate awe of his presence, although Yondu suspects it’s because his music’s stopped. He yawns, locking out his arms and hunching through a high feline arch.

At sixteen, Yondu gives him five years before he loses his lankiness and starts to fill out. Unless, of course, he takes after Kraglin, in which case he has Yondu's condolences. (Genetically impossible? Well, Yondu never studied biology. How’s he supposed to know?)

Quill pushes the sheets away from him, and treats each bare toe to a luxurious wiggle. They look all kinds of ridiculous, poking from the holes in his socks. They pong too, blue cheese and moomba farts, and Yondu would tell him to get them off his bed except that after their sweaty slog across Dizerall, his own are undoubtedly worse.

Quill’s eyes finally open. Then widen, and widen, and  _widen,_ like planets forming on fast-forwards.

“Shit, boss. You gotta lot of scars.”

Yondu glares at the closet door. Wrenching it open, he treats the shirts inside to a similarly brusque perusal. They ain't folded, because Yondu's got more important shit to expend his energy on, but every one has been wadded and stuffed into a neat lil' vacuum-sealing drawer, in an effort to ward off lice. “Yeah, no shit, kid.”

“Did they hurt?”

“No. Shit. Kid.”

“Huh.” Quill detaches his headphones in a practised flick, then flops on his belly, chin propped on his palms. “Did you cry?”

Yondu selects his next wardrobe, going for something as black as his mood. “I ain't answering that.”

“Did you kill who gave them to you?”

That gives Yondu pause, head half-tucked into his shirt and the gashes on his neck snagging on the collar. “Not all of ‘em,” he says eventually, to the fold of fabric in front of his nose. “Not yet.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thank you so much to all my commenters from last chapter. Sorry for any mistakes/weird formatting things. My internet is misbehaving, as usual, and I should've edited this more, but I could grumble all day. Next chappie: Kraglin and Yondu talk about feelings!**


	29. Big Talks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Here we go - these idjits finally confess! Apologies for the initial shoddy editing. I must've managed to not save the last edit, and didn't check it through before uploading. Dang it. Hopefully I've ironed out some of the kinks now.**

Sure enough, the promised knock comes as they creep into the night cycle.

“Come in!” he yells, grateful not for the first time that their cabins are the only ones on this corridor. When Kraglin edges through the half-opened door, armed with a reel of bandages, Yondu tips his chin to show off the neatly patched ring.

“Ha. Beat'cha to it. Went and checked on our new buddy in the medbay, and y'know how Mijo gets.”

The hand holding the bandages droops. Kraglin droops with it, a long wilting stalk. “Why'd you go to see him? Thought ya didn't like Kree.”

“I don't.”

Kraglin wraps his bandages around one palm, then the other. “Well. Y'seem to like him.”

Yondu returns to important business. In this case: filing down the yaka clumps from which he's gonna craft his spare prosthetic, and stacking his trinkets and his unsigned job-pads in a jenga block that's liable to avalanche should the galleon take fire. The whip, which has been lurking in the darkest corner of both Yondu's cabin and his nightmares, has finally been packed off back to the armory. Stars knew why he hung onto it so long.

“Y'don't seem to like that I like him, Kraggles.”

“I don't.”

“Hm.” He selects a toy – one of them spring-necked things that are meant to perch on a dashboard. The head twangs with a sound like wobbling laminated paper. He does it again, and again, for the sheer joy of making Kraglin uncomfortable. Until finally -

“Stoppit, sir.” A hand closes on his wrist. “Yer gonna break it.”

“S'okay. You'd steal me another one.” Sat on his desk chair with Kraglin behind him, Yondu rolls his head against the rest and smirks. “Now why don'tchu like my new friend, Kraggles? Don't tell me you got pre-joo-dices. I don't tolerate that shit on my crew.”

“You also don't take Kree recruits,” Kraglin points out, leaving the bandages on the desk in a disembowelled heap. “Because they fuckin' well enslaved you as a baby, sir. Until this guy comes along. Whas so special about him?”

He sounds teed off. Under normal circumstances, Yondu would class that as more insubordination than ought to be present in a conversation between captain and mate. But rather than shouting (or whistling) Kraglin out the room, he examines his mountain and, quite deliberately, starts to wriggle a pad from the foundations that's guaranteed to start a cascade.

Kraglin waits five full seconds, watching it teeter. Then groans and darts forwards to stop him.

“You're gonna _break 'em.”_

“Nope. I'mma piss you off so much that when I ask ya if yer _jealous_ of the Kree guy, you answer honestly.” His gaze snaps to Kraglin’s, crinkled around a grin. “Are ya?”

Kraglin's lips make funny shapes. They remind Yondu of them baby-games where the brats've gotta fit the right sized blocks through the holes.

“No,” he whispers. His eyes betray him though, and Yondu sighs.

“See? You ain't mad enough yet. C'mon, Krags. Talk to me. Why you jealous?” He even tries to sound _caring_ , rather than amused and flustery and hot under the collar, as his mind replays Kraglin’s knife sailing towards the mounted turret on repeat.

Nothing quells a semi faster than a long march back to ship. Yondu's cock withered every time he clocked a gaze glancing off his whip-stripes. Now though, it lurches against his thigh, a twitching scrape of plates on leather.

Kraglin's fists open and close like he’s sending semaphore. Yondu imagines nails biting the meat of his palm through his gloves. Sighing, he levers off his chair and saunters to the bed, both hands on his lower back to pop out his spine. He flumps onto the mattress, patting the space besides him.

Kraglin doesn't sit. Not right away. He vibrates instead, and Yondu expects to hear the rising, high-pitched whine of steam from a kettle. When that steam hits the boil, it doesn't overflow in a scalding flurry of fists and blaster fire. Kraglin spits words – harsh and cutting and _hurt_.

“Did you fuck him?”

_Jackpot._

Is it manipulative, to toy with someone like this? Absolutely. Does it make him a bad person? No worse than he already is.

“So what if I did,” Yondu drawls. Kraglin's body language leafs through its lexicon until it finds the Ds – Dejected, Desolate, Disappointed.

“B-but... I thought ya said you weren't...”

Yondu pats more insistently, smoothing a circle in the shaggy furs that's narrow enough for Kraglin's buttcheeks.

“I said wrong. Thought wrong too. But back to you. Want'chu to tell me _all_ about why you's jealous.”

Kraglin sits slow. Yondu waits for his ass to hit the bed of its own accord, or for his weedy thigh muscles to give out. “Ya... ya mean... You like...”

“Dick,” says Yondu. It's less of an epiphany than it ought to be. Just a lil' internal click in his brain. He wants sex, so he screws bot-hookers, because that's what Stakar taught him. Flesh-and-blood brains can’t be trusted, whereas the ones and zeroes of binary code are as predictable as they're absolute.

While bots boast a variety of body formats and genitalia, Yondu's never really _experimented –_ in part because he assumed that if he jizzed, he was satisfied. But there’s also the matter of his reputation. Like it or not, the vast proportion of spacers (Yondu included, although he’s working on it) still assume  _being penetrated_ is a synonym for  _weakness._

This doesn't feel weak.

It feels like greed, and desire, and a dirty, seedy want. The itch in his fingers he gets when he sets his sights on a jewel, relocated to his nethers. It feels like all the things he associates with being a good Ravager, crowned off with  _attraction_ for the pale string of a body hidden under Kraglin's jumpsuit.

Their conversation diverges from Yondu's dream-rendition, where Kraglin tucks a finger under his chin and tilts him into the kiss he denied him while removing his collar. Kraglin glares at his kneecaps, not moving an inch.

“I just. Sir. I can't see why you'd go to him, a stranger, who mighta betrayed ya to the Kree -”

“He didn't,” Yondu reminds him. He's still kinda surprised about that.

“-When you've got _me,_ right here.” His expression would look morose on a spaniel. “I'd do anything for ya, sir. Anything. Y'know that.”

Fuck. That semi ain't so semi anymore. Yondu doesn't cup the bulge along his inseam – too obvious. He turns slightly, directing conversation and erection at the far wall. The dent in the mattress deepens, gravity pulling Kraglin down the decline. His shoulder thumps Yondu's for all of a second before he scoots rearwards. “Anything?”

“Anything.”

“Y'mean, if I wanted to... uh? You'd wanna?”

A sharp suck of air. “Yessir.”

“And ya wouldn't let it affect yer work? You wouldn't make no mention of it to the boys, or – or brag about it in mess? Go round crowin' to everyone that you fucked Yondu Udonta, made him yer bitch?”

The next inhale has a shocked tone. “Course I wouldn’t! I'd never think of ya like that sir, an' – wait. You wanna, uh.”

Yondu dares turn – just at the neck. The gathering tent in his pants remains hidden as he tucks one crusty boot, leaving a stripe of things best left unidentified on the cream-white ruff. He cleaned his room before Kraglin showed up, as much as his pride allowed. His waste chute is jammed with crusty tissues, and his cheesy data-pad novels have pride-of-place. His heart hammers as he asks: “Wanna what?”

Sweat makes Kraglin's mohawk thicker than usual, a damp dark hyena-mane. Yondu wants to thread his fingers through it, bury his face in it, yank greasy handfuls as Kraglin’s thin lips crest his dick. “Take it, sir?”

“Ain’t that what’chu wanted?”

“Well _yeah,_ s'a lovely fantasy, but. Y’know. You bein’ cap’n an’ all _._ ”

Yondu doesn't gulp, although it comes close. He opts for defensiveness instead – because when has that not been a good tactic? “You mind what'cher insinuatin', Obfonteri! Thought'chu didn't put no stock by all that bitchin' crap.”

“I don't, I don't! Swear it!” Kraglin raises his hands, palms towards him. They go some small way towards appeasing. Yondu still scoffs, arms crossed. Then realizes that he's twisted further than intended, and their topic of conversation ain't doing him favors.

He's gotten aroused before – course he has. He regularly wets his dick in glorified sextoys. But fuck. He ain't with an unthinking robot now. He's with a _person,_ a person he legitimately gives a shit about, at that.

His stomach flutters, and he finally understands those _butterflies_ his cheap erotica harps on about _._ Kraglin blushes; Yondu's navy must clash something rotten with his maroon.

“Fuck,” he says, knuckling at his too-tight chest. “We're like kids on our last day as jailbait.”

Words stick in Kraglin's throat. He lowers his lashes, and Yondu discovers how much he loves the tint in his cheeks. It dapples down his neck, blotchy tattoos framed by the wine-dark pop of his collar. “Can’t help it, sir. Not around you.”

Yondu licks his canines. He doesn't intend to be sultry, but Kraglin wheezes like he's caught a punch in the guts.

“What about me?” he asks. And Kraglin – clever little first mate Kraglin Obfonteri, who watches his captain's back and makes sure his M-ship's fueled when he forgets, and keeps his schedule in a regulated order so Yondu don't double-book client meets; and who Yondu relies on an embarrassing amount, not just for work but to _stay fucking sane –_ understands what he's asking. After a moment's hesitation, he moves so they sit face to face.

Kraglin bends one leg under him, sole sticking out to the side. A sprig of chest hair curls from his neckline, and he starts his shaky rendition, slow as a prayer.

“I- I like yer smile. An' yer teeth – don't laugh, it's true. Y-you got these lil' fangs on the bottom, here...” He brushes Yondu's mouth, close enough to disturb the skin without quite touching. “And sometimes they just, uh, catch yer lip, an' I... I have to take bathroom breaks. I take a lotta bathroom breaks, sir. You mighta noticed.”

“I thought ya had a tiny bladder,” Yondu whispers. It's the sort of conversation to be held in hushed tones: all husky aspirations, vocal cords barely given chance to vibrate. Kraglin's snigger sounds just as subdued, just as muted, just as precious for it.

“Romantic.”

“Hey, I'm tryin'. An'... An' I like some shit about you too, a-hole. Like yer hair.”

“Huh?” Kraglin runs a self-conscious hand through it, combing the spaghetti strands that overhang his forehead. “Ya do?”

Oh hell. Is he really gonna say this?

 _Yes,_ Yondu thinks. Yes he is.

“Looks like crest,” he grunts. Monosyllables are good. Monosyllables are easy. He can _do_ monosyllables. “Thas' good.”

“Really?” Kraglin squirms, rubbing grime from the seat of his pants onto Yondu’s pelts. Yondu can't bring himself to care. He focuses on Kraglin: particularly on the delighted smile that wiggles across his face at the smallest compliment. He wants to see more of it.

“Really. You shave it like that on purpose?”

“I – I, maybe? You really like it?”

“Course I fuckin' do. Would put a bag on ya otherwise.”

Kraglin looks damn near ready to tear up in gratitude. “Thank ya, sir. Real sweet of you to say.”

He ain't taking the mick. Anyone else and Yondu might suspect, but this is Kraglin. While he can sass and snark with the best of them, authenticity radiates from every pore that ain't clogged with grease. 

“Think about holding it,” Yondu continues gruffly, palming the back of his neck. His fingers come away sweat tipped. That's okay; Kraglin's practically dripping. “About. Uh. When we. Uh. Think about bein' on yer lap, like in the brothel with Stakar. Or havin' you up against a wall, or kneelin' in front of my chair on the Bridge. Or you pushin' me over that chair, an' me reachin' back and grabbin' a handful an' yankin' while ya _fuck me_ cause I wanna hear ya _growl_...”

His voice rumbles deeper and deeper. By the end he's the one who's growling, while Kraglin looks like a hunted deer: big eyes and buckteeth and raw-gnawed lips.

“What,” Yondu says, coarse around his mouthful of gravel. He leans forwards, heart thudding furious, compressing the mattress under his palms an inch from Kraglin's leg. “Don't tell me you don't wanna.”

“But…” Kraglin looks gormless at the best of times. Right now he ain’t so much lost his gorm as incinerated it, buried it, and stomped on the grave a few times for good measure. “What about Kree guy?”

“Huh? What about him?”

“Ain't you and him...?”

Yondu scoffs. “You kiddin'? You think I'd let a Kree put their dongle in my hoo-ha and waggle it around?”

Kraglin winces. “No sir.”

“Good! Cause I wouldn't. You, on the other hand...”

“Could put my dongle in your hoo-ha regularly?” He sounds so hopeful about it too. Yondu doesn't have the heart to deny him – at least that's his excuse for parking his elbow on his knee and his chin on his palm so he can smirk up at Kraglin from hooded red eyes.

“I mean, if you wanna,” he says. Then, remembering how this all began: “You, me, bed. I'd say ya make my balls blue, but -”

“But it'd be redundant,” Kraglin finishes for him.

This is it. They're nearly there. Oddly, nervousness dissolves as they close on their final showdown. Like Kraglin's presence calms Yondu as much as it riles him. Like this is _right,_ like it's comfortable and wanted and _welcome._ Like they shoulda started doing this years ago.

When Yondu tires of not yet having been rolled belly down on the pillows, Kraglin deflects his straddle by drawing his knees to his chest. Their boots leave streaks on the mishmash of furs, silks, eiderdowns and rags that Yondu piles around him when he sleeps. Getting them dirty is the endgame though, so Yondu stows his complaints.

Kraglin however, ain't on board.

“You've had a rough day, sir.”

Yondu lets Kraglin see those sharp eyeteeth he waxed lyrical about. “Could be rougher, if ya wanna go t'town.”

“Don't want you makin' no rash decisions. Nothin -” Kraglin looks at him, very pointedly, then down at himself. “That you'd regret.”

That Kraglin thinks Yondu could ever _regret_ this is laughable. It's also strange being with someone with the autonomy to deny him. Frustrating, kinda. Yondu can't just snap his fingers and have Kraglin unzip.

But also _fun._ He likes a challenge. And Kraglin ain't said never. Just...

“Stay then,” he purrs, flipping open the covers. Then, before Kraglin can start gabbling denials and backing for the door: “Just to sleep. Don't get yer thong in a tangle, darlin'. We can take it slow. You doin' anything tomorrow night?”

“Y-y-you, apparently.” It would be smooth, if not for the stutter. Aw, Yondu loves it when he gets like that.

Or perhaps, he just loves him.

His stomach drops: a hollow yawn within, a sense of sickening vulnerability that sinks tendrils into every segment of his brain.

Him and Kraglin. _In love._

Yondu thinks of the datapads, stories Stakar loaned him for reading practice from his own personal collection. Their adjectival use makes his bile duct overcompensate.

Kraglin don't got  _cerulean orbs._ He has blue eyes – kinda greyish, in poor lighting. His spiky lashes feel like stubble against the pad of his thumb. They water when there's glare, because Kraglin's species developed to dwell in caves rather than under the starlight. And no matter where those eyes are aimed; whether it's at blue asses poured into skintight pleather at a bar, or at the charts that plot their course, or the job specs that keep them on this side of insolvency for another week; they always, always swing back to Yondu. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Yondu, you shit. Obviously, it's very Not Good to purposefully try and make your partner jealous, but hey. Yondu's a dick. The 'blue balls' line is, of course, from the very first chapter. Sorry for editorial weirdness - I think I fucked up and posted an older version. Or just didn't save my last edit. Dammit. Ah well - have some overdue mush!**


	30. Took Them Long Enough

Next morning is damn near surreal. He's been jarred into a parallel universe: a place where dreams are encouraged rather than dashed, and occasionally allowed to come true.

Yondu wakes with sun on his face. It streams through the porthole, amber and cosy, tinting his cabin sepia. Kraglin is plastered to his back like the deep-space parasites they burn off the _Eclector's_ underhull during careening.

Those brainless things can't survive in gravity, but they secrete a juice that melts them into the plating of any ship that pilots through a swarm. Sure feels like Kraglin's fusing into him now: knees tucked behind Yondu's, ribcage pronging Yondu in the back.

Yondu ain't never woken up in someone's arms before.

The Ravagers are a tactile lot. He discounts the puppy piles he, Aleta, Marty, Charlie, and sometimes even Stakar could be found in after a boozer, back in the good old days before Ego appeared on his contacts list and an irritating Terran slamdunked himself into Yondu's life.

Nowadays, things are different. Crew might crash in a messy bundle of bodies, BO, and booze-breath after a night of revels, but cap'n remains aloof. Imagine him bedding down between Horuz and Half-nut. Or worse yet – spooning up next to Taserface! Maybe that’s possible for a cap'n whose crew like him, and all that soft nonsense, rather than following his lead out of fear.

But anyway. It ain't the sensation of being held that Yondu misses. You can order a bot to do all kinds of depraved shit. Hugs are so vanilla they don't incur extra charge. But while Yondu indulges in them occasionally, whispering _hold me_ to the silicone replicas who share his bed, his mind knows it ain't real, knows the body wrapped around his is as fake as the pleasure on its face when Yondu fucks it.

Kraglin, on the other hand? Kraglin's so real it's a little overpowering - although that could just be his morning breath. His chest hair curls like wood chippings, scratching Yondu as his mate's reedy ribs swell and contract. The jumpsuit zipper must have worked its way down in the night.

A part of Yondu – the part that sees _taking it slow_ as weakness – suggests he tease it the rest of the way. A larger part relaxes. He lolls against Kraglin with a grumbling nonsense-noise, of the sort he tends to make before his morning dose of caffeine.

Kraglin nuzzles back. He's still sleeping – snoring, to be precise. But he's there, and he's bone-thin and brittle-feeling, and Yondu never realized he needed this, like a starving man who's been fed by IVs all his life and doesn't know to crave food; and why, why the _fuck,_ is his vision swimming?

Yondu's first assumption is that he's been drugged again. But when he wheedles a hand free of Kraglin's embrace, he presses it to his cheek and it comes away damp.

“What the fuck,” he whispers.

Kraglin mumbles something and sleepily pats his hip. Yondu's heart makes an answering pulse. They're mashed together in a long bent line, a racetrack chicane of red leather and mismatched skin.

He's read about this moment a thousand times. It's always the same, when the heroines realize they've leapt from that precipice, tipped headfirst into the chasm below, fallen for the man of their dreams.

Throb in the chest? Check.

Heat in the head and pound between the ears? Check and check.

What Xandarian erotica fails to mention is the nausea. The shame. The  _fear._

Love, huh? There's only one way to tell for sure.

Yondu rolls sharply to the left.

He breaks Kraglin's grip and keeps going, off the side of the bed, whistling with full intent.

The arrow stops.

Literally stops. Lurches to a halt an inch from Kraglin's bleary eye. If it had brakes, they'd be screeching.

Yondu sighs. He whistles a quiet trill, floating it back to its harness.

“Thought so,” he says, and stomps out of the cabin to hunt down Quill, leaving Kraglin quivered low on the sheets. Those sheets are a wee bit damper than previously – but eh, they've suffered worse.

 

* * *

 

 

The day grates by. Yondu can't look at Kraglin. If he does, he won't look away.

He's attuned to every miniature squeak of leather as the man makes his customary circuit of the Bridge, loping behind the navs and checking signals over the comm officers' shoulders, setting them on their course to Knowhere where they can trade the scrap from the barman's scuppered ship.

He ain't avoiding Kraglin's gaze because he's trying to outrun his emotions. Yondu's a badass. He don't need to run from anything, sentiment included. But he can't quell the flip-flopping ball behind his pouch that wriggles like he's ingested a tub of live beasties whenever Kraglin slopes by.

He ain't _nervous_ for tonight _._ Not excited either. Why should he be? Yondu's fucked a bunch of people (bot-hookers) in a bunch of interesting ways (so oral, anal, or vaginal, and with him being on the receiving end for that sole incident with the finger).

Kraglin's still spooked from his unconventional wake up call. Perhaps that was cavalier of Yondu – but hell, he wasn't gonna kiss the guy awake. He might love (ugh) the guy, but his breath could knock out a bilgesnipe.

He won't apologize. Kraglin knows him well enough not to expect it.

This doesn't justify him tiptoeing around Yondu though. Or his petulant little scowl when he asks whether Yondu wants to coincide their lunchbreaks and Yondu grunts a negative.

What? Did he think they were gonna be all cushy from now on, holding hands and singing along to Quill's Walkthing?

Yondu scoffs. His concentration's shot. He's barely done half the work he intended to. The last of the Bridge crew peel away, leaving their captain slouched in his chair, posture promising a sore neck, clicking through the spreads on a datapad he's opened and shut at least six times already.

None of it sinks in. Ravagers don't get breaks - straight from one job to the next. He could swear that he ain't seen none of this shit before, from the blueprint of a satellite that's shaped like a spiralled crustacean, to the descriptions of what's currently in their hold, due to be smuggled through the Nova stockade. 

“Sup,” he mutters when Kraglin tramps back in, armed with a bowl and a wary expression. Rather than offering it, his first mate perches on the chair arm, ass an inch from Yondu's elbow, and tucks in. Yondu scowls. “What, ya didn't bring me none?”

Kraglin gulps his mouthful too fast. He chuffs to clear his airways, wiping his dribble with his sleeve. Porridge slides from the end of his spoon, made of mashed meat, any greenery that can be harvested from the showers' mossy ecosystem, and pulverized yaro root, ripe or otherwise. “Sorry sir. I figured you was fastin'. Y'know. For when we...”

Fuck. Yeah, that word keeps drawling through Yondu's mind as if he's whispering in his own ear. Or better yet, as if Kraglin is.

Yondu sinks impossibly lower. His torso slides horizontal to the floor, chin digging into the high collar of his turtleneck. No scars on display – and Kraglin's the one person he doesn't hate seeing 'em anyway. But he still feels naked. And, worse than that...

Yondu is suddenly very, very aware of his asshole.

This is strange. It ain't a part of himself that he expends much energy worrying about. It does its thing. If it doesn't, he heads to Mijo for pills. Squat over pan, wipe after, occasionally rub in the shower.

He swallows. “Fastin', huh.”

Kraglin turns an unflattering mauve. “Yeah. I mean. If you wanna eat I gotta thing you could use instead to clean out with -”

“A... a thing?”

“Yeah.” Kraglin fidgets uncomfortably. Yondu ain't got no sympathy; it's his own damn fault for parking on the only surface on the Bridge less cushioned than the captain's chair itself. Once he works up the nerve to elaborate, he dictates to a space over Yondu's left ear. “It's a lil' nozzle that ya stick up there, an' a bag full of water, an'...”

Oh yeah. That's what's so great about bot-hookers – they only have holes, no messy body processes to accompany them. Yondu is struck by the concern that he's bitten off more than he can chew. Not literally – luckily. Seems he made a good call on skipping breakfast.

“I'll go hungry today,” he decrees, patting his gut. He thinks of Kraglin's skinny blue cock-warmers. “Could probably stand to lose a few pounds.”

“Hell no, sir,” says Kraglin, too fast and too fervent. He follows it up with a luminous flush. Yondu's squint twists into a grin, then a devious smirk. He leans in to impart his tease up close and personal, tucking a hand over Kraglin’s nape to keep him close, Kraglin's spoon dropping from his slack fingers to chime against his bowl...

“Uh. Hi, cap'n. Thought you’d gone to mess.”

Oh yeah. Neither of them locked the door.

Tullk swithers on the threshold, boots twisting in different directions. His expression ticks like it can’t decide which emotion to fix on.

Yondu's heart drops to squelch off his diaphragm. Hell. He really doesn't wanna have to kill Tullk. He's a good fighter, an old friend; a man who stood by him after Stakar cast him out. Yondu would even say he _likes_ him.

“Looks like you two got it covered. Guess ya don't need me to keep a skeleton shift, huh cap'n? Just uh. Be sure to look at the monitors occasionally, and clean up afterwards.”

And on that bombshell, he shoots them a ballsy wink and swaggers out.

Yondu's jaw dangles. He snaps when Kraglin pokes it back up. “The fuck was that?”

Kraglin seems confused. “The fuck was what, sir?”

“That! He saw us, and he ain't freaking out, and I wanna know _why -_ ”

Kraglin chuckles. That ain't a rare sound – it's just rare that he makes it at his captain's expense, rather than whatever sorry goon Yondu's chosen to bear the brunt of his witticisms. Yondu discovers he doesn't like it. He crosses his arms.

“Don't think I can't stick ya in Brig just cause we's shackin' up!”

“I was meanin' to talk to you about that, actually. Can we put a cap on the ranking stuff in the bedroo -”

“Oh no,” Yondu interrupts. “You don't get to go off topic. You was tellin' me why Tullk seems to think it's normal that you'd be sittin' here makin' goo-goo eyes at me and I'd be makin' 'em right back!”

Kraglin blinks. “I sit here all the time, sir. Tullk ain't blind, but he ain't like Half-nut either. Simple as.”

The thought that someone could _accept_ this – accept them! - rams a chisel into all of Yondu's conclusions about life thus far. “But what if he tells someone? I gotta go after him, I gotta -”

Kraglin catches his forearm. “He ain't gonna do nothin', sir. C'mon.” His lead teeth gleam like he’s oiled them, catching the colorful holopad display and reflecting it in monochrome. “Tullk's loyal, yeah? He's a damn good man.”

Yondu flumps so his implant smacks the chair.

“Fuck,” he whispers.

“Save it for tonight, sir?”

“Fuck _you._ ”

“I mean, I ain't one hundred percent opposed to that. Much rather fuck you, is all.”

Yondu raises a middle finger and rubs it on Kraglin's face.

“Fuck _off,_ ” he finishes. And then, when Kraglin's smile falls - “And, uh, calibrate my doorlock so no one walks in tonight. I don't care if the fusion engines blow or lil' Quill's made into stew. You an' me are havin' us some alone time.”

 

* * *

 

They do.

They also, as Kraglin promised, take it slow. 

He ain't done this before. That's why he quivers as his mate peels his clothes off, layer by layer.

There's always another buckle, another zipper, another shell of grubby, cracked old leather. Kraglin has to dig to find skin.

But once he gets there, knuckles brushing Yondu's bare belly, near the scar-line of his stitched-up pouch, he hesitates.

The tremble wobbles through Yondu top to toe. Kraglin removes his hand from under Yondu's shirt, misjudging that as the source of his tension.

It ain't.

Yondu's just a first fuckin' timer despite being thirty-plus (tottering towards the decade above, if he's honest). He’s got all of the eager vibrations associated with virgins. And Kraglin's looking at him, inches apart, and maybe Yondu understands that whole _ce_ _rulean orbs_ nonsense after all, because the world turns in a slow somersault and all he can see is Kraglin's eyes.

When Kraglin kisses him he grays out to static.

It doesn't help that Yondu has no idea what to do. This ain't a part of the bot-hooker special. He winds up standing stock still, knees locked out and fists clenched, lips pursed against Kraglin's like he's prepping to whistle.

When a tongue dabs his mouth, Yondu jumps. His teeth snick together, and Kraglin's lucky he doesn't get bit.

Kraglin's sigh gusts over him. Fuck, it's like every place he touches becomes sensitized. Yondu's lips full-on _tingle._

His glazed expression must be the tip-off. Kraglin retreats. He doesn't mention the embarrassing noise Yondu makes – not a whine, definitely not – or the blue fingers that bunch in his Mohawk.

That's good. For his sake.

“We can stop,” he murmurs. Then, before Yondu can snap that he don't need coddling - “I just don't wanna fuck this up, is all. Y'know me, sir. If there's one thing I can always do, it's that.”

Yondu knows that he's new to this, that all his experience comes from sticking his dick in glorified sextoys and reading lame romance novellas. But somewhere, in some quiet tract of his mind that ain't yet been drowned out by happy chittering as Kraglin rubs the ridge where implant grafts to skull, Yondu thinks he'd very much like to kiss that worried look off his face.

And so, he does.

Once they've recovered from the clonked chins and bruised noses, it's a miracle they're still standing. The mattress only adds another contender to the battle when wrestling out of leather uniforms, so they stay upright, clutching each other close.

Kraglin groans. Yondu ain't never heard him make that noise. He catalogs it for posterity, just in case. In case what? In case Kraglin decides the chase ain’t fun anymore when his quarry wants him back, and their first time is their only one.

Ain’t likely though. Even Yondu admits it.

He wrings Kraglin's mohawk as he fondles him over his last layer of leather, squeezing his sides and back, then daringly slipping down to cup his ass. Kraglin gets a good grip, even with the pants in the way, but the belt sits snug and he can't knead him the way he wants, leather keeping Yondu bunched up tight.

Yondu arches into it nevertheless. His lashes close of his own accord and he snags his lip between his incisors, chewing while Kraglin palms him, buttocks clenched under bony hands.

At Kraglin's sharp inhale, Yondu remembers what he said about eyeteeth. He draws out the bite until the last moment, before releasing his smelly gasp in Kraglin's face.

He doesn’t seem to mind. This time, Yondu tilts in the opposite direction rather than mirroring him, and their faces slot together like they were carved to fit.

It's spittier than expected. Kraglin shoves his tongue in his mouth with none of the finesse with which Yondu’s seen him inveigle his way into the hearts and asses of his pretty blue conquests, but that just means he's as close to falling apart as Yondu is.

“Cap'n,” he whispers.

His mouth tastes of porridge and sour saliva. Yondu doesn't know why it's so arousing, feeling the warm whuff of air being fed to him.

But it _is,_ dammit all, and a coil twists tight in his belly, and his pants stretch far too tight, and he can't stop thinking about how _warm_ Kraglin is.

The bot-hookers don't run cold. It'd be kinda off-putting. Sure, some folks out there harbor necro-kinks, but circuitry winds beneath the surface, so even when their heat function’s inactivated, the girls at least feel tepid to the touch.

Kraglin though? Kraglin's a fucking furnace. When Yondu returns the embrace, arms looping around thin ribs with a squeeze that makes Kraglin chirp like a squeaky-toy, the heat binds them together, sticky under their clothes.

Yondu realizes, as if from a distance, that he's making noises too. Hitchy ones, small ones, ones that he ought to feel shame for. Possibly anger at Kraglin for invoking them. It doesn’t manifest. Yondu tracks the rhythm of Kraglin's groping, and the flat palm that runs down the back of his thigh and up again, over the swell to stop at the small of his back.

“Good, sir?” Kraglin asks.

Yondu can only nod.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mushiest pre-smut I've ever written. They're finally getting there, guys. I'm so proud of them. Thanks so much for sticking with this fic! Not much more to go. I, uh, miscounted the chapters initially. Sorry about that.... Comments & Kudos = Love!**


	31. In It Deep

Kraglin strips first.

Toeing off his boots, he peels down his sweat-soaked jumpsuit. It unsticks from his skin with an audible tack.

He faces Yondu, keeping the slashes on his back hidden - another of those unthinking displays of kindness that softens Yondu somewhere deep inside. Kraglin pushes off his shoulderpads and folds the suit to his navel, than lower, revealing just how far that stripe of brown goes, like a natural necktie that points to his crotch.

Kraglin's a hairy guy. Yondu always knew that, objectively, but he ain't never had the chance to _feel_ it.

Or rather, he has, many times – but he was always too blind to know what was being offered, or even if he wanted it.

Where Kraglin's coat wanes, he's still a little furry. Stroking those near-bald spots (the inside of his elbow and behind his knee, the soles of his feet and his earlobes) is kinda like touching an apricot. Soft fuzz, the same color as Kraglin's flesh.

He indulges the curious trail of fingers. A smile wriggles across his face when Yondu flips up his bare sole, crouched over one of Kraglin's legs and bending the other at the knee. He scrabbles his fingers against the bottom, to little effect.

“Sorry sir. Ain't so ticklish as you.”

“I ain't -” Yondu cuts himself off. Denying it is liable to make Kraglin prove it to him. 

He flings Kraglin's foot away and treks down that line of hair, burying knuckles in the musky brown curlicues that ring Kraglin's dick.

“Lemme,” he breathes. Kraglin obligingly rubs the length across Yondu's hand.

It's stiff – not nearly so much as Yondu's, which he keeps trapped in his pants for the time being. But Yondu supposes that when you fuck as many men as Kraglin, your stamina improves by rote.

It's strange to the touch, as if there's too much skin for its shape. Folds gather around the base, rather than the head. As Kraglin hardens his foreskin migrates back along the shaft, bunching around a shiny, wet-looking bulb.

That's relatively familiar. What's less so is the way the dick curls and _lengthens,_ wrapping backwards around Yondu's thumb in a way that makes him faintly nauseous.

Then again, he's only ever known one other. That twitches behind his crotch zipper.

It's like being back on Dizerall: sweating into his leathers, a rainforest trapped against his skin. Everything's slippery and sticky, and when Kraglin's cock extends another three inches to coil around his hand like a satisfied python, Yondu's plates contract against his inner thigh.

Yondu unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

“Does it. Uh. Always do that?”

“Only when I'm with someone I like,” says Kraglin, which is kinda cryptic because does he mean that this is a physical reaction, or a mental one? Does he slip this pretty dick into all of his partners, or does it stay average and dull for them while Yondu's treated to the whole shiny, self-lubricating, and vaguely tentacular experience?

Yondu can't hold it against him. He kisses him again, catching Kraglin's lip on his fang. The tang of blood hits sharp as a snorted line, and Kraglin's gasp is just as delicious.

Yondu drinks it down. He doesn't tug Kraglin's dick so much as he holds it, letting it slither between his fingers and thumb.

Kraglin decides he'd better repay the favor. He worms his hand between them, rubbing Yondu's belly with unspeakable fondness where it bulges over his belt, before he sets to work on the clasp.

How he gets it undone one handed, Yondu has no idea. But then the leather husks from his skin like Kraglin's shelling a nut, and his cock is _there,_ pronging against the soft skin of Kraglin's forearm, a sturdy deep-blue thing with plates along its underside.

Ain't nothing Kraglin hasn't seen before. Ain't nothing Kraglin hasn't gawped at before either.

But this? This is different. Kraglin stares at his dick like he stares at open bank vaults, crocks of A'askavarian gold.

“What?" Yondu resists the urge to push his legs together. But something of his fluster – no, not _fluster,_ just, y'know, a vague and healthy wariness, like one might feel upon walking into battle without a groin cup – must show on his face.

 

He's biting his lip again. He only notices when Kraglin _moans_ and hooks the back of his head to press their foreheads together.

He stares into Yondu's eyes at close range. It's all so overwhelming, so potent: Kraglin's smell, Kraglin's stubble, the irises so close that they lose focus and drown Yondu in swimmy grey-blue.

The first hint that Kraglin's going to jerk him is when his fist closes.

Yondu's hips buck, filling out Kraglin's hand. His dick doesn't get juicy; Kraglin's tempting blisters.

“Can ya feel anything through these?” He taps his nail against the plate.

Usually, the answer's no, but when he's turned on...

The flick bursts a bubble of pleasure, spreading out from the impact point.

“You gotta,” Yondu manages. “Harder.”

The line of their foreheads swelters. Strands of Kraglin's hair cling to his face when he nuzzles their noses together in the closest he allows himself to requesting another kiss, another tap of his dick, anything. He doesn't beg, of course - at least, not verbally.

He does however, squeeze Kraglin's prick.

His fist closes, the dick lengthening by a full-hand's length, before Kraglin's leg jerks and he winces. And then he looks grumpy, in a self-directed sort of way – like he's berating himself for not being able to take everything his captain gives.

Yondu hastily relaxes his grip. He gives the squirmy thing a pat, as if to soothe it.

Kraglin releases him, making a hushing noise when Yondu protests, fucking air. He scoops a trail of gelatinous slick from his dick and slaps it on Yondu's.

It's simple and practical and a wise move for the sake of Kraglin's hands. But for some reason, it's that which undoes him – the connection of their eye-contact, the knowledge that the wetness (which smells pubic and animal and indescribably _Kraglin_ ) comes from the body pressed against his...

Yondu's abdomen clenches. His ass and thighs bunch, twitching earnestly into Kraglin's grip.

His eyes make to roll back – but no. He can't.

_Not fucking yet._

He wrenches away fast enough to give Kraglin friction burn. Thankfully, his mate has the sense not to hold on. But he ain't smart enough to twig the cause for Yondu's sudden retreat, instead flapping over Yondu, hovering without touching, red-faced and quivering and all-kinds of miserable.

“Did I - shit, sir! I'm so sorry!”

This means Yondu has to _explain it._ With his _words._ That if Kraglin touches him for one more second, he's gonna explode…

Kraglin shifts closer. Concern twists his face, an expression bot-hookers ain't capable of.

“Wanna,” Yondu pants. “Too fast.”

He knows from the way Kraglin's eyes settle on his dick, dribbling a string of silky fluid from its tip, that he understands.

Before he can translate shame into fury Kraglin comes to a decision. He shuffles forwards, between the inviting split of Yondu's legs. He runs the flats of his palms over the muscle, feeling the heat, the power, the bulge of his thighs under the leather.

When he crests the top of the quadriceps and dips around to torment the inner thigh – never brushing Yondu's cock, never doing more than _pressing_  – Yondu shudders and tenses so hard his abdomen shows through his pouch.

“Fuck,” Kraglin says. His dick, freed of Yondu's grasp, paints a spiral around its hairy nest. “ _Fuck._ Sir. Yer. Yer -”

“Call me beautiful,” Yondu gasped, “an I kick ya in the teeth.”

“I'd still risk it, sir.” He doesn't though – for which whatever scraps of pride Yondu has salvaged are grateful. Just keeps his hands splayed over that sensitive triangle around Yondu's groin, long fingers nudging his hipbones.

The leather mutes everything. Thank the stars – that's the only thing keeping Yondu from jizzing all over himself like a kid Quill's age. He can feel Kraglin's fingers, like he feels the heel of his thumb and the bone in his wrist. But with that extra layer between them, the sensation spreads. It's sultry and maddeningly unsatisfying, dissolving through the nerve endings without bringing any relief.

“Ya sure you don't wanna cum now? I don't mind.”

Like Yondu needs reassurance. He shakes his head. “I want'chu inside me.”

“Y'know this's still sex right? We don't have to – not now. Hell, not ever, if you don't wanna -”

“I want'chu inside me.”

The more he says it, the truer it gets. 

“Want'chu inside me. In me, now.”

It becomes a little chant of sorts, and every time Yondu repeats it, Kraglin's chest rises and falls less steadily, and his face flushes darker, and that magnificent slithery cock ties itself in knots.

Yondu makes grabby hands. His boots are like ankle cuffs, their weight hampering his movement as he tries to wrap 'em around Kraglin's waist.

“C'mon, c'mon, c'mon. Don't make me order ya -”

“Not here,” says Kraglin. He revokes all contact. 

He forgives him pretty quick though, pouncing as soon as Yondu nods. He shoves Yondu's shirt up to his armpits and yanks his pants roughly down.

They trap his thighs, and Yondu wants 'em _off,_ dammit. But there ain't no time for Kraglin to be fumbling about with boots.

“Out the way,” he snaps. Then, before Kraglin can give him that sad puppy look he and Quill must've been comparing notes about on the sly: “Arrow, idjit! Move!”

Kraglin rolls – just in time. Yondu whistles. His crest flashes red.

The arrow zips past once, twice, three times, precise as a scalpel.

Once Yondu blinks away the red trails, he finds Kraglin staring at the neatly sliced seam of his pants. Tatty leather drips over blue.

“Fuck,” he says.

“Bout time ya got with the program.”

Kraglin crawls over him, rolling the half-shredded pantlegs as far down as they go (the bunch of fabric cuts off circulation, but Yondu'll worry about that later).

It's at that point that Yondu remembers from his casual perusal of holonet porn sites – purely for reference purposes, you understand – that they've forgotten a fairly important preparatory stage.

Xandarian pornos are very educational. Most come complete with full health and safety briefs and risk assessments, and those that involve anal penetration of a non self-lubricating male stress the importance of easing the way.

Preferably, with something more substantial than the slick gobbit Kraglin hoiks into his palm, mingling with blood from his split lip.

Yondu's eyes don't pop wide, as that same palm smears over his cheeks. Definitely not. It's warm and sticky, gummier than his own saliva, and he's got enough plump down there that Kraglin can't just rub it on. He's gotta go spelunking first, into the sweaty slice between.

It's almost disturbingly sensitive, when touched by someone who ain't him. Yondu tenses at the first light scratch around his hole.

“I – fuck -”

“We're both with the program then.”

Kraglin doesn't push in – not yet. He just trails around that hot, private place, buried beneath Yondu's bulk, wrist joint popping as he readjusts.

Yondu tries to rock his hips up, make it easier, but he can't hold the crunch for long. He squashes the poor guy's hand when he falls.

“Don't worry. We've both had all our venereal vacs, an'... Ow! Shit. Sir, look, like this...”

The hand wriggles out from under him. Yondu does his best to make absolutely no sound at its loss.

The damp patch smears between his cheeks while Kraglin shakes out his wrist. Then, with a grunt and a heave that Yondu shouldn't find anywhere near as sexy as he does, especially not from a man he could bench-press without too much trouble, Kraglin hoists his thighs up and wraps 'em snug around his waist.

Yondu's back curls naturally. It's easier to hold this position when his legs have something to clutch onto – which they do, with great enthusiasm.

Perhaps too much of it, given Kraglin's wheeze.

“S'rry,” Yondu mutters.

Then freezes, because he has fucking _rules_ about apologizing – i.e., it don't happen. And now Kraglin's got him to do it not once but twice, and he's simultaneously the best and the worst thing that's ever happened to him, and Yondu _likes_ him so much it physically hurts.

To his credit, Kraglin manages not to look too shocked.

“S'okay, sir,” he says, after a pause that's only half a beat too late. “Yer doin' good.”

“You ain't even in me yet. Don't need no sweet talk. And...” Yondu wriggles, dragging Kraglin's torso to the left and right. Spit lines his rim, but beyond that...

He remembers the lube pot on Kraglin's floor. It's probably still there, crustier by the day.

“Uh. Not that'chu ain't the experienced one, Krags. But I think yer gonna need a lil' more wet down there before ya go to town.”

That, for some reason, makes Obfonteri crack a grin.

“Do you trust me?” 

Yondu neither confirms it nor denies it – but he lets Kraglin line himself up without whistling, and really, that speaks for itself.

It's perfect for precisely five seconds. 

Yondu keeps trying to sit up, crane over himself, see where they're going to be joined. He paws at his dick where it blocks his view, and locks his legs in another stranglehold.

This time, he only notices when Kraglin starts slapping his calf and gesturing to his face, whose hue rapidly approaches Yondu's own.

“Uh. Whoops.”

It's a fucking travesty, that's what it is when Yondu releases him and Kraglin's dick loses contact with his backside.

“Crush instinct, or somethin'. Too many arena-hours clocked when I was a kid.”

Kraglin clutches his chest, panting. “I can think of worse ways to go."

Then, after a moment of rubbing his bristly chin, he snaps his fingers and rolls onto his back.

Yondu sits slowly. “Uh, you wanna...”

He ain't disappointed. Well, maybe he _is,_ but just a tad. How can you not get all het up: your man bulging against you, cock rubbing your hole, grinding you apart?

Yondu's stomach rumbles, conspiring with Kraglin to ruin the moment. Hell. This never happened to the chicks in the stories.

After this, Yondu promises it. He'll eat a whole fucking colony of beasties stewed in their own juice, if he can only take Kraglin's dick first.

Kraglin, when Yondu peeks to check if he noticed, watches him with the fond amusement Yondu reserves for his crew when they're torturing small animals or failing at math. He pats his hairy thighs.

“C'mere, sir. I'm thinkin' ya might enjoy this.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Kraglin thinks right. Yondu's beginning to suspect that he's psychic – or at the very least, a fortune teller. This is all the more logical, because his dick is made of pure magic and incredible things tend to come in pairs.

Booze and huffer. Whores and money. Kraglin knowing what Yondu needs, and giving it to him too.

Yondu settles himself: boot heels grinding mud onto the sheets, legs catching his weight with Kraglin's cockhead bumping his perineum. Slowly, without any effort on the part of its owner – who pointedly tucks his hands behind his head – that cock wriggles back, leaving a moist trail along Yondu's crack.

“You wanna take yer shirt off, sir? Must be mighty warm...”

Yondu nods. But he can't free himself of the leather; not when the dick squashes on his pucker. There's plenty of slick – Kraglin seems to secrete the stuff from his fucking pores. But hell, no way is this gonna fit...

“Here we go,” murmurs Kraglin. “C'mon sir. Relax for me. Thassit.” His fingers skitter along Yondu's thighs, crossing the seam where ragged leather, singed at the edges, meets rough blue flesh.

Yondu's skintype is lizardish, scaly on the body and scuted around the dick. If Kraglin strokes him in the wrong direction he'll risk a cut. But he knows, from his own tentative nocturnal probing, that he cedes to silky softness on the inside.

 Kraglin pushes up, one hand propped on the pillow while the other helps Yondu's collar over his head. It's such a small penetration. Kraglin's cockhead compresses to fit the hole rather than spreading it apart.

Ain't no bigger than Kraglin's smallest finger. But it's still a shock, because it's soft and wet and _wriggling,_ and when Yondu squeezes it _squidges_ , solidifies, and squirms an inch deeper.

His face catches in the shirt, a sweat-stinking blindfold. Kraglin draws the leather up, dragging his biceps over head.

That tendril expands, just a little. The rippling flare runs along its length, from where the first three inches are sunk into Yondu up to the burrowing tip. 

“If ya take it all this thin,” Kraglin says, as if from a distance, “it'll go right up into ya. Mass displacement and all. Skinnier it gets, the longer.”

Now ain't the time for a biology lesson. Yondu contracts, gasp crackling from deep within his chest. He swivels his hips, wrists tugging his caught sleeves.

He makes a noise that might be classified as a whine, had it come from Kraglin's mouth.

The ticklish whisker creeps deeper.

 _Hell._ Is Kraglin actively trying to kill him?

Yondu fucks at nothing, cock slapping off his bare belly. Sheets crunch under his dirty boots.

“L-lemme outta this,” he croaks, waggling his hands. “I wanna see ya -”

Kraglin doesn't hear. He keeps talking, a soft disembodied voice. The folds of Yondu's shirt block off his vision; ain't nothing but the stink of his rebounding breaths and the dark.

“Can always jus'... Lessee... curl round yer thingie, yeah? Don't need to make it big to get ya comin', sir.”

“What d'you mean, _thingie_ – oh. I. _Oh._ ”

When the hooker manipulated that little bump inside him, it'd been a slow but tremendous build; nothing to shout about to start with, but finishing with a thrumming, escalating orgasm that seemed like it could pulse on for as long as she kept stroking before her mechanics atrophied and her circuitry degraded and her finger rusted through at the root.

Right now though, Yondu's so pent up that the sensation zaps him from the get-go. It pulses electric, sparkling under his skin.

Kraglin teases his prostate, cock like the longest and most dexterous tongue. It massages there, and Yondu could've sworn that spot was a portal to every nerve in his body, stimulating down to his toenails and up to his inner ears.

He feels Kraglin _everywhere._

The lack of vision helps. It enhances his other senses to compensate. Hands smooth over his thighs, then down and back, dipping over his calves to hook his grubby boot heels. Kraglin rises until he's seated with Yondu on his lap.

He's surrounded in sex, smothering in it like his own stale air. When Kraglin finally relieves him of his shirt, eyes not sticking to a single scar, it only gets better.

Because there's Kraglin beneath him. A scarecrow of a man, his ribs protruding as much as the little belly below them. His abdomen forms a rawhide pillow over which Yondu can rut, and his smile squiggles like the tattoos that creep down his chest, lip bitten to blood and bruises.

His prick inches further in while Yondu's distracted, exploring uncharted territory beyond where fingers reach. It undulates slow, draining the tension from Yondu's limbs as he sinks over Kraglin's lap.

“K-Kraglin -”

“Yer doin' real good,” breathes Kraglin.

Yondu thwacks his cheek – because he _said_ he didn't need reassurance, dammit. But for some reason, his hand lingers, cupping the underwhelming jawline, holding Kraglin's face. He takes it all in: the pale eyes, the sallow skin, the y-shaped scar on his temple from a barfight Yondu has no recollection of but which he assumes they won.

Kraglin's cock finds a touch more give. It expands – not by much, just a quarter of an inch. A little puff, inflating and stiffening, becoming less like jelly and more like clay.

Yondu's drops lower again, thighs split around Kraglin's narrow waist. With his knees braced, he can lean back and catch himself with his palms on the mattress in a scarred blue arch.

But for once, Yondu ain't thinking about that. The ruined skin doesn't cross his mind. There's only the pull at his hole, Kraglin's prehensile prick tugging this way and that, teasing him open to make way for more. The whole time, the idiot watches his face, the handprint on his cheek fading slow.

Slick drips from the crux of Yondu's legs. It smells amazing, and Yondu inhales until all that's inside him is that thick, hot, mouthwatering scent, and Kraglin's throbbing dick.

This time, he doesn't stave off the orgasm. He lets it flow to meet him, smooth as the Dizerall tides.

“Kraglin,” he mumbles. He uncurls one hand from the sheets, reaching for what he doesn't yet dare say.

Kraglin catches it. He tangles spindly white with stubby blue as he pulls the overlapping plates up and down Yondu's cock.

“ _Kraglin._ ”

“Here we go.” His scratchy-soft voice feeds the furnace rumbling in Yondu's abdomen. Quite literally rumbling, as it turns out.

Kraglin sniggers. Then slams his mouth shut and checks for Yondu's reaction: all big eyes and droopy, sweat-tangled Mohawk.

Yondu considers being angry. He really, truly does.

But at the end of the day, this is exactly what it seems – two guys engaged in a bout of surprisingly slow and tender anal sex, one of whom ain't eaten since the night before.

Yondu snorts. Kraglin takes that as his cue to join him, silver teeth flashing behind his thin pink lips.

Yondu's still chuckling, right up until it hits, Kraglin expanding his dick to squash his prostate and stretch his velvety hole. He ekes it out of him in firm, milking rubs until there ain't nothing left to give.

He's still trembling when Kraglin hitches up in a hard thrust, and Yondu realizes that he ain't hovering midair no more. His ass sits flush to Kraglin's groin. That squeezes the last bead from his limp tip, just at the concept of it.

Kraglin  _inside him,_ all the way.

It drips onto Kraglin. Yondu rolls in place, chasing more  _everything._ The cum smears, thick and wet, and Kraglin's belly hair gleams like it's been pommaded.

Kraglin clutches Yondu's back. His hands slip lower, nails digging between the scales, leaving crescent slices. He grinds up, testing the slack, again and again, teeth bared against Yondu's collarbone without quite daring to bite.

Yondu tips his head back. The fuzz in his brain erodes into the amber glare of solars overhead.

Kraglin cums like he seeps lube. It leaks along the length of his cock, so much of it that Yondu squelches when he breathes.

But as his first mate stills, urgency fading to bliss, the squelch fades too. As do all sounds in the galaxy, it seems, bar the strum of the _Eclector's_ engines and the stutter of Kraglin's breath.

Yondu shuts his eyes. He listens, chest heaving, spent dick resting on Kraglin's pelt.

His exile still stands. Stakar's tax ain't getting any lighter. Kree-guy's gonna be in the medbay for the better part of a month and Quill knows about his scars.

All in all, the universe is very far from perfect. But in that moment, Kraglin's hand wrapped safe in his, Yondu can be forgiven for thinking that life doesn't get better than this. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **i was gonna write them talking about Space STDs and condoms, especially considering Kraglin's casual attitude to sex. Buuuuuut it got too distracting. Take it as given that everyone takes anti-venereal vacs? I might add a scene to the last chapter, hehe.... The last chapter's a little tie-it-all-together thing, so I'll upload that in a few days. Thank you so, so much to everyone who's ever left kudos and comments, and who leaves them in the future. Special mention to Havicat, Bridgh and Jellybeanforest for leaving some truly epic-length reviews! You guys are my light.**


	32. Little Prayers

“Work comes first.”

Kraglin glances up from where he's sluicing the slime from his cock. They're in their shared bathroom, nozzle on full blast overhead, and the pound of water on tile can easily eclipse a word.

“Whassat, boss?”

“Work comes first.”

Yondu pushes from his casual lean on the doorframe to join him. The spray patters against his cheeks, light as the drizzle that preludes a hot summer's rain. Then comes the waterfall: a cleansing cocktail of water and solvents that strips away engine oil, natural grease, spilled blood, and the top layer of skin.

“Quill comes second.”

Kraglin ain't stupid enough to believe this is the actual order by which Yondu categorizes those priorities. He's definitely not stupid enough to say so.

He doesn't say or do anything, in fact: just watches Yondu approach, thumbing the last pearly streaks from that wonderful cock.

“And,” continues Yondu, stepping so his toes nudge Kraglin's.

He makes it look deceptively easy, tucking curled fingers under Kraglin's chin, tilting his face so the water splits over it, forcing him to shut his eyes so they ain't subjected to a chlorinated bath. But inside sings a chorus of conflicting wants.

'This is stupid' meets 'this is perfect'; while 'he ain't a bot-hooker, he's real, he's dangerous, the hell're you thinking', crashes headlong into 'I don't care, he's mine'.

“You come third.”

Under the drops that cling to his lashes and the rivulets that braid through his stubble in a thousand different paths, Kraglin is smiling.

Yondu presses his thumb to his lips, marvelling at the ease with which they part. He gathers the wet, slicked-back strands of Kraglin's mohawk, winding them between his fingers, knotting them together.

A real person. That's what Kraglin is. From the curly thatch of hair on his chest to the stink of his pits and the glint of lead in his mouth from all the molars Yondu's knocked out over the years.

Kraglin has dialled the heat to the cusp of scalding. It's so hot that their kiss becomes a stupid romantic metaphor for this whole shebang: two lives, melting into one.

And yeah, Yondu should reduce the solvent content before that comes literal, because his lips sting and he doesn't dare open his eyes for fear he'll lose 'em. But one more minute can't hurt.

Kraglin huffs his morning breath direct into his mouth. Yondu passes it back, assured that they both taste as disgusting as each other. Their teeth clip and chime, metal against metal. Fur and scales and scars rub between them – a helluva lot of those.

They still have to hash out the finer details of what a relationship entails, like what Kraglin's got against calling him _captain_ in the bedroom and whether Yondu's still allowed to indulge in bot-hookers while Kraglin's deployed.

But that can all wait.

Yondu strokes the artery as it palpitates in that grimy cove behind Kraglin's left ear. He buries his nose in the crook of his neck, sniffing the leather-musk that clings to his skin, nipping at his collarbone to make him moan.

“What d'you think?” he purrs. The tone's sultry enough, but his attempt to blindly raise his head results in him headbutting Kraglin's throat.

Kraglin chokes. He almost opens his eyes – before clamping them shut fast enough to save himself the burn.

“'Bout what?”

Yondu rubs his implant under his chin in the closest he'll come to that dreaded third apology. “'Bout takin' the day off, gettin' to know each other a lil' better?”

Kraglin shivers happily. When Yondu's hands wander cheekily groundwards – and discover that Kraglin has as much ass as can be seen in profile: i.e, very little – he shudders harder.

The delighted wriggle crushes him to Yondu's chest, bone meeting brawn and half-toned muscle. But before Yondu can kick off round two, Kraglin answers the rhetorical question.

“We've left 'em a cycle already. How long d'you think they can go without blowing shit up?”

He makes a good point. Not good enough for Yondu to consider changing his mind. He keeps right on groping. He discovers that the hair in Kraglin's crack is still springy, untouched as-of-yet by the shower, and sneaks under him to tweak his wrinkly sac from behind.

“Mm.”

“Or piloting the ship into an asteroid field,” Kraglin continues. His voice comes breathier, and the dart of satisfaction ain't like anything Yondu felt when he was driving his dick into mindless, unfeeling plastic.

“Mm.”

“Or eatin' Quill.”

Yondu's hand freezes. “Fuck.”

“Yeah. We oughta -”

“Yeah, we oughta.”

“Hm.”

Neither attempts to leave. The most movement is when Yondu idly reaches out to crank off the shower, letting the last of the itching, irritating droplets flush down the camber and into the drain.

“One more, at least?” he suggests. “If Quill's gonna get himself dead without my supervision, he'll have done it by now.”

Kraglin's wry 'I'm-totally-not-smirking' smile twists into something significantly more wolfish. He mirrors Yondu: squeezing together and pulling apart, using his asscheeks as plush blue handholds to drag Yondu in until their crotches grind.

As of yet, everything's still flaccid. Ish. Enough of an 'ish' that it could very easily escalate.

“Can we do it in my room this time?”

“Why?”

“Jus' a bit more welcomin'. I got a mat an' everything.”

Yondu blinks. “That matters?”

That smile has a distinctly wobbly edge. “Not as much as you. S'yer call, Yondu.”

Yondu kisses him, and makes it.

 

* * *

 

“Whas the lube for?”

In the end, they made it no further than that selfsame mat. Yondu suspects the _fuck you_ is imprinted on his shoulder from where the friction rubbed him raw.

He wanted Kraglin in him again, truth be told – thought it might be addictive, being prised open so gently, stuffed soft and slow and sweet and _full_ on a dick as slick as cream. But this time Kraglin wrapped his cock around his and fluttered it up and down until Yondu's eyes rolled back and he pressed his still-wet hole against his mate's fingertip with ever-growing desperation.

Kraglin, snuggled into his side, peels his sweaty face off his chest. He leaves a streak of stubble rash. Great; Yondu's gonna look like he'd been rolled down a velcro hill at this rate.

“Huh?”

“The lube, by yer bed.” Yondu points. He lies with his head crunched against the door, staring over his pectorals and their new navy scrimshaw.

The pot is on eye level, more's the pity. It looks crustier than ever – neglected, almost. Kraglin doesn't drop his head fast enough to hide the smirk.

“What.”

“Nothin'.”

“ _What._ ”

“Jus'... Most guys look at the flame, the garb, the scars.”

Oh yeah. Kraglin has plenty of those too. Yondu's struck by the spontaneous – and utterly ridiculous – whimsy to squash his lips against the nearest, but thankfully, none are within kissing range. He makes do with carding the hair on Kraglin's shoulder, stroking his boxy tattoos.

“They see a Ravager,” Kraglin continues, although to Yondu's mind he's more like a petted cat, the way he curls towards that touch. “So, when I tell 'em I make my own slick... Most ain't inclined to trustin'.”

“Well. They's missin' out.”

“Aw.” Kraglin messily crammed his mouth against Yondu's clavicle. “S'nice of ya, Yondu.”

“An' I'm glad,” Yondu continues, a touch louder. “Cause I don't like sharin' my things.”

There's silence. Yondu refuses to indulge in doubt, but (for once!) his mind won't listen to reason.

Did he push too far, move too quickly? Is Kraglin even looking for something steady? Who's to say that all Yondu's dithering didn't convince Kraglin that he's only a fling, not stable-relationship material?

Or perhaps he just don't appreciate being talked about as if he's a thing to be possessed. Yondu knows he'd certainly be champing had their roles be reversed; and dammit but why does he not _think_ before _opening his mouth_...

Kraglin relaxes. He nuzzles Yondu like he's a particularly voluptuous mattress, flinging a leg over his.

“Good,” he says, yawning wide enough to scrape a blue nipple. He pats Yondu's belly, over the stitches in his pouch, and leaves his hand there, positioned perfectly for Yondu to drop his on top.

An invitation, a promise, a quiet little prayer.

“Me neither.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Guys. It's been a long and beautiful ride. Thank you so much for sharing it me. Kisses for every comment, every kudos, and each and every one of you who's made it to the end.**

**Author's Note:**

> **Comments = undying love.**


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